success with Santos.

This week some of my 3rd grade classes have been checking out the work of  Santos Leonel Orellana Paz. He goes by Santos. I share that he is originally from Honduras, he found his way out to San Diego County via the bio-tech industry after earning a degree in chemistry.

He believes that the most important thing for the success of children is education. This belief led to his creating the Alfabetismo collection of paintings. A series of 26 paintings that focused on one letter of the alphabet at a time. The students and I went through a number of these, looking to find the letter that was camouflaged in an abstract network of lines and color fields in the background.

This lesson was their introduction to watercolor painting technique this year. Their painting would serve as the background to a line drawing of a word that they felt was important to the success of a child in life. We talked about how this was different to Santos' series because they would be using a whole word instead of a single letter in their image. 

When we started painting, I modeled using more or less water to create different color values and then they created their color fields.

The next part of the process was to brainstorm a short list of things they felt were important to their success. They then sketched out a couple concepts- just the word first and then they added other lines and details to hide the word a bit more and to flesh out their compositions. 

When they had a sketch they were satisfied with, they drew it out lightly with black crayon over top of their painting, added supporting lines, and made those lines bold and strong to emphasize them from the background. (With this step, you want to make sure there is enough time between finishing the painted background. If the paper is too wet, it can tear or the crayon won't apply as cleanly. A hair dryer could be used for those pieces.)

The final part of the project was to explain WHY they chose that particular word. Why did they think that particular things was important. 

"Sleep" is important because it is needed for your health.

"Confidence" is important because you need to have good thoughts
about yourself to do good things.

Santos is actually opening a new gallery of his artwork in La Jolla this weekend. If any readers are local, you should swing by to check out his work!

skull symmetry.

Last week, I started my shape unit with my second graders and we focused on geometric shapes and symmetry in art.

Before starting, we reviewed how we used line in our previous 2 projects- to make shapes with contour lines and to make patterns.

We started the lesson by looking at some sugar skulls from Day of the Dead celebrations and talked about what the holiday is and how a lot of the skulls have symmetrical designs. I then showed them an illustration by British artist Supermundane and we identified symmetry and geometric shapes in his work.

We drew out our abstract skull designs on watercolor paper together. At each step, students had choices- what geometric shape head, what geo shapes would the eyes and nose be, what patterns would they add to different parts of their design?

We traced all the parts with a black sharpie and then added a couple more patterns with white crayon to create some patterns in white, too.

We painted the drawings with watercolors. I emphasized that they should use a little bit of color and a lot of water to make light colors, so their designs wouldn't get lost under opaque colors.

This project took up the whole hour, so this week, students are completing an exit slip that has them comparing their new project and this one:)

raining with david.

This week the kinders are learning to identify cool colors in art. I'm sharing a painting by British artist David Hockney with them.

When I share the painting with them, students identify the rain, puddles, and oval shapes. I then show them my example and we identify the 3 cool colors. We also notice that the lines in my example are white.

When we draw out the ovals I tell the kids to press as softly as they can with their pencils. We add more ovals to each puddle, identifying them as small, medium, and big. Then we switch over to our white crayons and trace the lines, but this time we press as hard as we can, so the crayon lines will resist the watercolor later. Broken white line patterns are added for raindrops as well.

I demonstrate the painting before passing out brushes to the classes. When they see the white lines appear as I pull my cool colors across the paper many of the kids get pretty stoked. It's art magic:)

Students are free to apply the colors wherever they want to their rain scene. Once they are done painting, they complete a sentence that tells the reader what they created in class. This is a little different than their previous sentences because they are writing the whole sentence for me and not tracing a frame and filling in a couple blanks. I put up a list of words used in the lesson that they can use. I also provide a sample sentence for them to see. I'm looking forward to seeing how their sentence reflections grow as we head into our 3rd marking period.

uh oh...

I thought all the 2nd grade classes would be glazing their pinch pots this week, but I ran into some kiln issues... grrr!

Half the pots for my first class today were at the bottom of a hot kiln load this morning. Such poor planning by someone who shall not be named;) 

Anywho, I needed a project to do and remembered the work of Japanese artist Miroco Machiko that I had pinned earlier in the year. Mrs. Knight also did a project based on Miroco's work with her students this year, so I pulled up both Miroco's website and Mrs. Knight's blog post to share with my class. 

I like to share the work of other students as well as our focus artists because it allows kids to see how other kids have approached the project. I have found that it makes the work a bit less intimidating for them.

Like Mrs. Knight, I talked about the still life as subject in art. We also realized that Miroco's shapes of fruits and veggies did not look 3d and round. She doesn't worry about using light and dark colors to make things look 3d. Flat is good with her:)

Before jumping into the project, I had students give me names of some fruits and veggies. As they told them to me, I drew them out on my front board, so they would have some references for their shapes. 

I had the students shoot for at least 9 shapes on their paper. I emphasized using a variety of sizes in their drawing. I also stressed trying to use the whole paper. Once they were done drawing, students traced their shapes with some fancy metallic crayons. In hindsight, I wish I had them make these lines a little thicker, but the kids LOVED using these crayons. 

After that, I quickly demonstrated how to blend two watercolor colors together inside a shape. Another crowd pleasing moment:) Students could use any color except black.

Once students finished painting in their shapes they moved onto painting the background with black. I was a bit nervous about this step. I was picturing a big mess, but the kids showed great control with the black and the amount of water and color they used to fill the background.

Thanks for getting me through my morning Miroco and Mrs. Knight:)