surf's up!

This is the lesson I did with the 3rd grade classes before the light motion project.

Heather Brown is a painter and printmaker who lives on the North Shore of Oahu. She loves being in, on, and around the water. These are the things she makes her art about. Her work reminds me of stained glass windows, with her use of bold, bright colors and thick contour lines. 

I shared a few of her paintings with the students. We revisited 3d space in art and how Heather creates in with size, overlapping, and color value changes. We then talked about how she creates movement in her work. All the kids agreed that the waves looked like they were moving and not standing still. I got a   lot of wave hand gestures and air spirals when kids were describing why Heather's waves looked like they were moving. That was great because she does create movement by simply using curved and wavy lines. She also does it by the position of the waves. They won't be staying in that position for more than a split second. 

We also looked at Heather's color usage. She uses lighter colors and darker colors to give the waves some volume, as well as to give her scenes some 3d depth. The 3rd graders had created light and dark versions of colors in their first two projects, but they did it through changing hand pressure. Students in each class were able to tell me that in order to do it with tempera paint, they would have to use more or less water.

We drew out our waves together. I did several different seascapes with the classes. Most were based directly on Heather's paintings and a couple were different compositionally, but used her vocabulary of shape, line, and color.

We traced most of the lines with a black crayon to help keep paint from bleeding from shape to shape. We used sharpie markers to trace the lines in the white foam parts because they were often smaller and more detailed than the other parts.

When it was time to paint the waves, I suggested using the analogous color family of yellow, green, and blue, with some violet thrown in too. They could use other colors on their surfers, skies, and islands. The main thing, no matter what color they used, was to mix light and dark values of those colors to create 3d volume and space in their paintings.

A few students finished their work by the end of our first meeting, many kids came in during recesses to get further along, and pretty much all the students were done painting after having 20 more minutes during our 2nd meeting.

I think so many of the results came out terrific. Stunning really.The students really enjoyed the project and Heather's work. It's something about the ocean and waves as the subject, I think. This is the 3rd project over the past couple years that I have done with waves and the students always have a high level of engagement.

a little more light.

The last 4 3rd grade classes did the light motion project today. Some groups had some different takes on the concept.

lover of the light... part 2

Just as much fun today as it was yesterday. Still one more day to go.

It was parent appreciation day at school today, so I even had some parents try it out:)

This one was done by parents in Ms. Kidwell's class!

lover of the light.

Love this song. Just saw Mumford and Sons at the Hollywood Bowl. If you ever have a chance to see this band, do it!

Love this project. I'm jumping ahead with this post because the 3rd graders did this when they finished up a painting project that focused on creating motion through shape and line. I'll post about that later this week as more classes finish up.

I had pinned a light graffiti project that Ms. Novak at Organized Chaos did with her classes, because, well, it's awesome:) Last week a teacher and photographer friend of mine, Mr. Sam Ellis, posted a pic of a project he was planning with his high school classes and it reminded me of Ms. Novak's project. I shared her post with my friend and realized that this project would be perfect for this week.

Perfect because the 3rd graders would have about 30-35 minutes with me after finishing their paintings. perfect because it is an example of how motion is captured on a 2d surface. Perfect because kids get to dance and move around while learning about art.

To start I asked the kids about how they created motion in their paintings. Then I showed them examples from Ms. Novak's blog and asked them how the photographs showed motion. We identified that the images showed movement by showing where the light paths had started and where they ended up. In order to capture this movement with a photo, you need to leave the shutter open for a longer period than normal.

Ms. Novak does an amazing job breaking down the specifics and she included a couple short videos to explain the process too.

I had a a few colored lights and a couple flashlights for kids to use. They worked in groups of 4 to 6 students. After a few trials, I set the shutter for a 5 second exposure. Kids can move a lot in 5 seconds:)
Each group came up and performed while the rest of the class watched what they did. After one pic I let the group see what they did. Before the second pic I offered suggestions like having some people move fast and others slow. Some go side to side while others jump up and down. I also shared each pic with the class so they could get a feel for what certain movements translated to in a still image.

The kids absolutely LOVED doing this. My plan is to print out a photo from each performance group and return them to the classes.

I'm going to add glow sticks to the fun tomorrow.

I'll post more pics later.

3, 3, and 3.

This week I worked with my kinders again. I focused on shape and collage. The lesson was not inspired by a particular artist (shocking)! However, I am sure you could link this lesson up with one. Calder perhaps?

The first thing I did was revisit the drawing we did the last time we met a month ago. In that drawing we used overlapping to make it look like one shape was in front of another. I showed each class a drawing that I had saved from their class and pointed out the overlapping. This was important, I told them, because in the new lesson we would have to overlap shapes to glue them together. If you don't overlap the pieces, the artwork won't stay together.

The image above is where I got the idea for the project.

After revisiting the concept of overlapping, I introduced the kids to the primary colors. This was easy because I have labeled my 3 long student tables as a red square table, yellow triangle table, and blue circle table. Supplies are placed on these laminated shapes on each of the tables. We also identified the 3 basic geometric shapes that were present.

After that I showed students an example of the project they were going to make. I pointed out how some of the shapes were flat and some popped off the paper. I showed them how their sculpture would look different depending on which side they looked at it from.

The students did a great job with the cutting, rolling, folding, and gluing involved with this project. I modeled how to hold scissors correctly and ow to turn the paper to cut out a shape instead of turning the scissors. 

We looped the paper to make our 3d circle. We flattened a 3d circle and flattened it in a different direction to make our 3d square. We folded a rectangle a couple times and turned it into a 3d triangle. I loved seeing the faces on some of the kids as I helped them make these shapes:) 

I emphasized choice in the placement of the shapes when they glued them together. It was up to them how they arranged their flat and 3d shapes together. Some kids made their flat shapes look like an ice cream cone or a gnome. Others just played freely with their shapes to come up with something neat looking.

3 shapes. 3 colors. 3 dots to make a triangle. Infinite arrangement possibilities.

I took 2 pics for each of the sculptures below, so you could see the sculptures from different angles.

playing with clay.

Whew!

I'm tired. The first grade classes and I have spent the last 3 days making clay flowers.  I rolled out at least 100 slabs during the time. I'm so out of shape, I'm sore:)

We focused on identifying and using different textures in art. I saw these flowers by Charity Hofert a while back and thought they would make a terrific way of introducing how things feel to the kids.

The kids got a a 3x3" piece a clay and a 6x6" one. They then pressed a plastic texture plate into the smaller one. There was lots of pounding going on. They really had to get their little bodies into it to make a good impression. In turn, I did a lot of pressing as well.

We then drew out the flower shape on the smaller piece and then cut it out with plastic carving tools.

We repeated the process for the larger piece and students switched plastic sheets so they would have a different texture. we then rolled up a small piece of leftover clay and pressed one more texture into that one.

We stacked the pieces and then used ONE FINGER to apply slip to the small and medium pieces to stick them together. Some kids followed this application rule, others did not:)

The kids loved doing this project. The cutting out of the shapes was challenging for some, but all of the pieces are unique and very cool looking.

Students will glaze the pieces the next time I meet with their classes. My plan is to show them as a group wall installation and then return most of them to the kids, and holding onto a number of them for our annual student art show. I'll share the finished pieces when we get there:)

Some samples I made.

All 8 classes.