coloring with philip.

This week I wanted to do a lesson with my 1st graders that had them mix all 3 of the secondary colors they have learned about in previous lessons.

I have been a fan of San Diego based illustrator Philip Tseng for a few years now. I was first introduced to his work on the threadless online t-shirt store. I did a project based on his playground take of Mondrian's work last year. I love how his sense of humor shines through in his designs.

I shared a few images of Philip's from his website with the kids at the beginning of the lesson. We looked at how Philip, even in his funny designs, often made things look a little 3d because he uses light and shadow. We also looked at how he used secondary colors in some of his designs. There were many laughs to go round:)

When I stopped on our focus piece, I pointed out both of those elements. The students all agreed that this was a fictional scene, because, um, crayon boxes can't color by themselves! They need US:)

We drew out the box, crayons, and limbs together. I asked the students to decide how their box was feeling and to draw a face that showed that. Students then colored the box hard on the front and soft on the side to make it look more 3d. Then they colored their crayons, some with just primaries, others with mixed secondaries. The final step was for students to add what their crayon drawing on the ground.

This guy flipped the whole drawing. Totally correct. I find this fascinating.

Vampire!

Sinister?!

I love how narrow the box is.

The kids had a lot of fun with this project. At first some thought it was going to be way to hard, but so many students had success drawing the box well. It was also a good review of how to make their secondary colors.

I love the variety in boxes and the expressions that are on them. 

Some of the classes finished glazing a clay project before they started this exercise. They still did this drawing, but it was half the size of the other class drawings.

more devries.

One 4th grade class focused on a different painting by Shane Devries when they used color and shape to create 3d space and volume last week. These are a few of the best drawings from that class:)

twistin and turnin.

This has been a fun one:)

The 4th grade classes needed a little extra time on their Shane Devries landscapes, so I wanted to do a low stress, high success project with the shorter time I had left this week.

Thank you Ms. Novak over at Organized Chaos! I recently came across a project she did with her students a while back and thought it would fit the bill perfectly. The project is to make a paper sculpture with warm and cool colors, one long cut, twist and turn the paper to create interesting loops and pop outs, and glue those pieces together.

I shared Ms. Novak's blog post and examples of her students' work with each class. I did this while some were finishing up with their previous project. My students had a hard time believing that "little" 2nd graders actually made the stunning examples they were looking at:)

I also very quickly shared a couple sculptures that Frank Stella made, so they could see how a "bigger" artist used the same concept of twisting and turning a shape to make something new and interesting.

When the students were ready to start, I shared 3 photos of my sample, so they could see how they would add warm colors to one side of a sheet of paper and cool colors to the other. I also showed them a photo of my continuous line on the warm side. With the last one, I emphasized that the line started on an edge and ended on a different spot inside the square and that no 2 parts of the line should touch each other.

Adding the warms and cools to the paper was simple enough. When it came to adding the continuous line,that's when some of the students had a little difficulty. Some made completely closed shapes, some made their line to simple. These students were able to modify their designs before cutting after discussing the issue with me.

I then modeled how they should "play" with their cut pieces to find interesting solutions to their sculpture problem. Once they tried out a few ways to shape it, they could then add glue to make parts stick to each other. Echoing the sentiments of Ms. Novak, I emphasized to the students that they couldn't really go wrong with this problem. As long as the sculpture didn't end up flat like a piece of paper, they were creating a 3d form.

flowers in her hair... or birds, radios, or candy.

This image by artist and illustrator Kelly Beeman inspired a 4th grade drawing project I did with a few 4th grade classes last week. Kelly is based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She often makes portraits of women. I like the way she alters the human form and plays with color in these images.

With this lesson, students focused on using color value to create 3d form on a portrait and using it to create 3d depth in a cityscape as well.

Kelly chose to fill her subject's hair with colorful birds. The students could fill theirs with whatever they wanted:)

spring forward

It's warming up in San Diego! Woo hoo!

My succulent garden is blooming like crazy, more people are breaking out their shorts, and the 1st graders are drawing springtime landscapes inspired by the work of Tim Nyberg (who is probably still buried in snow. Sorry, sir:)

The first graders have been exploring mixing secondary colors with the primary colors this year. The made orange in their candy corn still lifes and purple backgrounds in their icicle paintings. I thought Tim's work was a perfect introduction to making green. Tim paints and draws portraits, still life, and landscapes. Lots of landscapes. He is crazy productive. Many of his compositions are figurative or figurative abstract. He creates a lot of tree images and I like how these follow the seasons and how he makes sometimes subtle, sometimes drastic modifications to composition as he revisits his subject.

When I shared Tim's work with my classes, I talked about landscape as an art subject, and his heavy use of green. I pointed out that often times their were different greens present in the same work of art.

I based our project on one image in particular, and we drew out the composition together. As we drew I talked about how Tim often made his tree shapes more simple than they really were. We used the letter "U" to make some trees, and many students also used geometric shapes like circles, rectangels, and triangles as well.

We including a little overlapping and size change by putting a simple hill and small tree on it, to make some 3d space in the drawing as well.

Then they were ready to do some mixing. As we colored together I talked about how the greens we make would look different depending on how hard we pressed with the yellow and blue, and what blue we used in the mix.

I love the variety in these. The compositions, of course, are very similar, but the mark making, energy, and color choices make each one unique. The first graders  have done a great job so far this year with learning how to press hard and soft to make different colors or values:)