creating creatures.

I shared the work of designer and artist Don Pendleton with the 3rd grade classes this week. Don has done a lot of super cool stuff within the world of skateboarding. This got the kids VERY excited about his work:)

Don has applied his figurative abstract style to skateboard decks, sunglass frames, beverage containers, and even sneaker soles. I enjoy, and so did the kids, the range of items he applies his creativity to.

We looked at a number of images from his website and then focused on the below image as the inspiration for our project.

I asked the class what creature stood out the most in this image. What they identified was-

- the one in the MIDDLE

- the BIG one

- the one with the MOST DETAIL

- the one with the MOST COLORS

A great collection of ways an artist can make something become a focal point in an artwork. By doing these things, I explained, Don had also created a foreground and a background in the image.

We then set about to create our own creatures. I emphasized that we weren't copying Pendleton's work, but only using his vocabulary and style.

Students started out by drawing the large shape for the main character. They added details to the character next, trying to limit themselves to geometric shapes. They used verticals and horizontals to break up the background and then added more simple creatures to some of those new shapes. They then traced all their lines, using mostly thick lines for the main character and mostly thin lines for the background.

How students used color to fill their designs was up to them. I said they could use warm and cool colors, or primary and secondary, or any other combination they thought would be interesting. The one thing i emphasized is that they should press hard in some shapes and softly in others, so that they would have light and dark colors in their designs.

The classes came up with some pretty interesting variations on the abstract character theme. They also did a great job staying on task throughout the lesson.

Way to go 3rd graders and thanks to Mr. Pendleton for inspiring another art project!

This guy wanted to do a picture of Albert Einstein. I think he did a great job capturing his "wild" look:)

This student had to use her opposite hand to draw and color due to her cast on her drawing hand. She didn't hesitate at all. She dove right in and did an amazing job!

dancing with jerry.

The paintings of Jerry Whitehead served as the inspiration for the 1st graders second art lesson this year. I love the energy that comes through in his work due to his use of line, color, and body positioning.

Jerry, who is a Cree native from Saskatchewan, Canada, has always loved watching dancers at pow wows that he attends. These dancers are the main subject of many of his paintings. When I share his work with the students I point out how the figures are not just standing there in his paintings. He changes their posture, bends legs and arms to show that they are in the midst of moving.

His use of bold contour lines also activates the characters in his work , and this element provided a good connection to the artist that we focused on in our first lesson, Philip Tseng.

We also discussed how some of the dancers block us from seeing parts of other dancers. We defined this as overlapping and talked about how this creates 3d space in an artwork.

Direct instruction was used to do the drawing of the dancers with the students. After that, students traced their contour lines with a black crayon. I emphasized pressing firmly so the lines would be dark and so they would act as bumpers when we did our watercolor painting.

"Painting?! We get to paint today? Woohoo!"

Yes, the students got to use watercolors to create the colors on their characters. I demonstrated how to make tints of colors by adding more water to the paint and then they were off, painting away. The only painting restrictions were that they try to use only one color per costume and that they use light and dark versions of that color on each costume.

Kids really enjoyed getting to paint for the first time this year. Even though the characters were done with direct instruction, there was still a good range of visual variety in the group of 1st grade work as a whole.

new lands with lindsay.

Lindsay Denehy is a designer living down in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I met lindsay years ago while both of us were drawing outside the lines at LSU. I recently rediscovered some of her work online.

I enjoy how she abstracts and flattens natural forms in landscape images. You can see the influence of Dr. Seuss and Hundertwasser, but she definitely has a created a visual vocabulary that is all her own.

She has a great eye for composition and space. There is a great balance of pattern and open space in many of her images. She understands that their often needs to be some "breathing space" in a composition, so the viewer isn't overwhelmed when taking an image in.

I thought that her work would make for an interesting investigation into 3d space in art for my last go round with the 3rd graders this year.  When I shared her work with them I emphasized that even though an image is abstract it can still have 3d depth. It can still have implied volume in the shapes. Recalling a couple other projects this year, the students were able to identify 3d space in Lindsay's landscapes through overlapping and size change. They were also able to see how some shapes looked 3d because of the tints of colors used to show that one side of the object was receiving more light than the other.

The main images we viewed were a large mural and a small computer generated drawing.

After modeling how you can be inspired by an image and not copy it, I let the classes try it out for themselves. There were many interesting interpretations of Lindsay's style and visual vocabulary. Some stayed closer to her original images than others, but nobody copied one of hers exactly, which I was very excited about.

After drawing out their compostions in pencils, students traced their contour lines with black markers. Then they added color to the drawings with crayons. I emphasized and modeled  the use of tints to add visual variety and to make some, if not all of the shapes look 3d.

The classes were unable to finish the project in one hour, so it carried over into the next lesson. Most students need 2 full hours to complete the activity. Those that finished early were tasked with creating another abstract landscape, either by themselves on a smaller scale, or with a partner on a larger scale.

I really love the way so many of these turned out. 

an inukshuk... and ted.

The 4th graders did a project based on the work of Canadian artist Ted Harrison last week. I found out about his work on one of the blogs I follow, the Artist Woman.

Ted is primarily a landscape painter who uses a strong palette of color in his work. These colors often fill closed shapes and do not blend into each other. His landscapes are of the Yukon territory in Canada. In one of these paintings he included an inukshuk.

An inukshuk is a stone sculpture in the form of an abstract person created by the Inuit people that inhabit North America and the Arctic Circle. These sculptures are not made to be decorative, but are used to communicate messages. I told the students to think of them as "traffic signs" in the wilderness. The arms could point in the direction of a safe passage. They may also be made to honor an ancestor.

While discussing the art of Ted and the Inuit people, we discussed warm and cool colors and identified them in the above painting. We also talked about positive and negative shapes and how their relationship with one another is very important to the success of an image. These shapes should interact in an interesting way and have enough variety to keep a viewer engaged in the artwork.

We followed the plan that the Artist Woman laid out in her blog post- laying out the composition in pencil, tracing contour lines with crayon, applying watercolor to the paper, and cutting black paper to create our own inukshuks.

When doing the painting I demonstrated adding more water to the paint to make lighter tints of colors. I applied this technique to a stream shape in my painting by starting out dark in the back and adding more and more water to it as the shape continued down to the bottom of the page. By doing this it made the shape look more 3d and added more depth to the painting.

Students were encouraged to use creative thinking to create an image that used warm and cool colors effectively and had an interesting relationship between the positive and negative shapes.