wayne's world.

I have always loved Wayne Thiebaud's work. The composition, the repetition, the color palette- it all pulls me in. He has been painting for a LONG time. He'll be 92 in November and he still pulls two shifts in his studio almost everyday. I can only hope that I am that creative and productive if I'm lucky enough to make it here on earth that long!

Wayne is most well known for his paintings of dessert items, but he has also created many wonderful landscapes. Some are urban and some are more rural and agricultural. I shared a few of his rural landscapes with my 1st graders this week and we talked about his choice of subject matter, his use of contour line, and his use of pattern.

In this project my goal was to introduce students to how line could be used to define space and shapes and how it could be used to make pattern. I also touched upon the use of size and color value to create depth in an artwork. 

The drawing was executed in three easy steps- contour lines in pencil, trace the lines with marker and add patterns to our fields, and add color to the landscape with crayon. Easy peasy:)

 

 

 

Great job kids!

gumballs.

Today I had the pleasure of meeting with Ms. Smart's k-1 combo class again. They're a group that has interesting personality and good focus. I meet with them in my kindergarten rotation, but I gear the lessons to 1st grade standards.

I did a lesson that revisited the use light and dark to create volume. We created cylinders and spheres with line, shape, and value.

I was looking for something that would be a little fun and I turned to Mr. Thiebaud. Wayne Thiebaud, he of the paintings of pies, cakes, ice cream, and gumballs.

We looked at this one and I talked about Wayne's use of light and dark to make the painting look so real.

After this we did a directed drawing to create the cylinder and sphere. We added smaller circles to the inside. Some wanted their machines full, and some wanted them to look like pieces were already eaten.

I demonstrated hard and soft on a few gumballs to show how to make light and shadow and they were off...

We then added value to the cylinder and table.

The kids did a great job altering hand pressure to make light and dark colors. This is such a difficult skill to master and they rocked it!

let them eat, er, draw cake.

Jeez. How many of my projects are of food items???

These two are 2nd grade lessons, but they could easily be adapted to multiple grade levels. The main focus for each of them, like the Luke Best project, is making things look 3d on a flat piece of paper. The other focus is to make my students as hungry as possible:)

I have always loved Wayne Thiebaud's work. The sweetness of his palette and his subjects. The students looked at a few of his paintings and we talked about his use of geometric shapes and light/dark colors to make his desserts look 3d. I explained that a cake may look like a circle if you look at it straight down, but if you look at it on a table the top looks like an oval. Students combined ovals and straight lines to make cylinders that were then turned into cakes. When the cakes were "decorated", the students pressed softly to make tints and hard to make shadows. They also added black to emphasize the darkness of some shadows and cast shadows.

The work of Surrealist painter Rene Magritte is the inspiration for the other project. I call it, "You Are What You Eat".

We look at some of Rene's paintings and how he made things that were not possible look possible. He does this with a careful eye for shape and color value so that his scenes look real and 3d. 

While looking at a couple more of Rene's paintings, we identify his use of scale, detail, and overlapping to create depth in his work. Students will use these same strategies to create 3d space in their versions of this portrait painting.

Students choose one of their favorite things to eat or drink to replace the head in their portraits.
They learned about complementary colors in a previous lesson, so I thought it would be a  good, unobtrusive tie in to incorporate their usage in the background.

1. intro to Magritte and depth

2. brainstorming food ideas- list writing

3. food item sketches

4. draw body, food item head, and landscape background

5. add complementary colors to background

6. add color to head and body, using tints and shades