meow... i mean RAWR!

The second lesson the 2nd graders did again focused on their use of contour line to define shapes. Since we are only a couple weeks from Halloween (how has THAT possible already?) I thought it would be fun to do a project based on an illustration by Dinara Mirtalipova.

After sharing what Dinara had written about herself on her website and looking at the accompanying photo/drawing of her, the students came to the conclusion that Dinara is a little bit silly:) We looked at several of her illustrations and identified her use of contour lines and patterns. The Jennifer Mercede project from last week had addressed both of these concepts. The students got a big kick out of her crocodile image and her bird on top of a monkey on top of an elephant design.

We also looked at how some shapes in her illustrations covered up parts of other ones. She used overlapping to create some 3d space in her work.

The image that was our focus is called 'My Inner Monster". I only showed the monster shadow part first. After the kids shared what could be making such a shadow I scrolled down further so they could see the little kitty.

The students were very excited to be doing a drawing based on this. I stressed that we would be building some of the drawing together, but that the design of the monster shadow was up to them. This got a bunch of hoorays in each class.

We identified some overlapping parts, patterns, and a few contour lines. A number of students also pointed out that the shadow did NOT have a contour line around it. Awesome.

We drew out the cat, pillow, rug, and floor line together. I modeled how to make some picture frames, clocks, book shelves and open doors and let the students add what they wanted to their interior setting.

When we did the rug I stressed the importance of using diagonals for the sides, so that the rug looked like it was laying down and not standing up like a fence. I decided to add the door element to again address depth with diagonal lines. Many kids included this feature. Did the door lead outside? to a dark or light room?

Students traced a few of the parts in the front to make them stand out a bit more and then added color to the different parts of the drawing. Just like the giraffe picture last week, students were asked to create light and dark areas by pressing soft or hard with their crayons.

The monster shadow was the last element we put in. I emphasized that it was important to attach the shadow to the cat and/or pillow. We all did that step together. What they drew on the wall was up to them. The only thing I pointed out was that they could only show an open mouth if the shadow was in profile. If their monster was facing us then we would not see it's mouth in it's shadow.

They colored the shadow in softly so that elements that got covered by it were not totally lost in the final drawing.

The second graders had a lot of fun with this project and they are off to a great start in art this year:)

biking around.

The first 5th grade project of the year was inspired by a few different people. The art work of Leslie DeRose and Christine Vineyard and the art projects created by Mrs. Knight's 5th grade students.

Mrs. Knight posted about her project at the beginning of the year that was inspired by Christine's work. I knew I had to try out something like it with my 5th graders too. I had previously pinned an image by Leslie and thought that her painting would make a good intro to contour line, positive shapes, and negative shapes. Leslie's work had the contour line element I wanted to incorporate into the lesson for my line unit.

I started the lesson by sharing the above image by Leslie with the classes. We pointed out her use of contour lines to define the edges of the bike shapes. We also talked about composition, in particular, how she zoomed in on interesting sections of the bikes. She wasn't concerned about including the whole bike. If an artist zooms or crops like this, they can get rid of extra empty space (negative shapes) that can lessen the impact of the design.

I gave the students a couple handouts with several bikes to choose from and viewfinders to look through. I demonstrated how to move the viewfinder around to find interesting parts to draw. I also shared Mrs. Knight's post with examples of her students doing the very same thing.

Love the decision making present on this one:)

Students practiced a couple compositions on the back of their watercolor paper and then drew one of them to fit on the full front. This was definitely a challenge for a larger number of students than usual. I re-demonstrated drawing what they saw in numerous classes and worked one on one with many kids. As I demonstrated drawing what they saw in the viewfinder I talked about how certain parts touch the edge of the viewfinder, how certain parts go half way across the viewfinder window, and so on.

This said, I am proud of my students for not quitting. There certainly was frustration in each class, but no one gave up.

Once they had the image drawn large they traced the contour lines and colored in the positive shapes firmly with crayons, so the colors would be bold and strong.

When the students finished coloring the bikes, they finished up their designs by applying watercolor to the negative shapes. I demonstrated using enough water to make tints of colors. I asked students to make their colors light, so the background shapes would not compete too much with the bike parts.

About half the students in each class were able to finish their designs in the hour we had. I plan on giving each class ten minutes at the beginning of our next meeting to complete their bikes. 

Way to hang tough kids!

up to our necks...

in patterns.

The first lesson I did with the 2nd graders this year was inspired by the work of Portland based artist Jennifer Mercede. Jennifer makes paintings with a rather sweet color palette. Her most recent work focuses on a variety of animals. The creatures and patterns she includes in her work are defined by delicate contour lines.

I found Jennifer's work on pinterest last summer, and since then I have seen a number of other lessons also inspired by her work. I think it is pretty cool that she is having such a positive impact on art education programs around the country.

I used her work to introduce students to contour lines, pattern, and creating light and dark colors.

We drew our giraffes out together, traced them with black markers, and then added color to them by pressing either hard or softly with our crayons. Once that was done, we added a few horizontal lines to the background and drew patterns in those shapes. We did not trace those lines, and when we colored the background patterns we did the opposite of what was done in the giraffe. This is a deviation from Jennifer's work, but I wanted the students to see how they could make parts stand out from one another by handling the tools they used differently.

The students did a great job with this project. Most classes had a good handle on making things bold or light by applying more or less pressure with their crayons. This will serve them well when we move on to making things look 3d and round later on when we focus on shape.

If you are reading this and you have a lesson based on Jennifer's work or you know of another one, please feel free to share in the comments section:)

a little more line.

The first 3rd grade project required 10-15 minutes of the 2nd class period I met with them to complete. That gave us about 45 minutes to do something new.

We looked 3 stained glass windows by Lightworks in England. I asked the classes if these designs looked 3d like the landscapes they had just completed or if they looked different- flatter. I asked them what kind of lines they saw and what kind of line they did not see a lot of.

Students got that the glass designs looked flatter, and I showed them how the lack of converging diagonals in them made the designs look this way.

We also quickly talked about the use of tints and shades and how you you create them in a drawing.
The students had used tints in the landscape drawing they just completed, and some students had made shades of colors to create shadows in their drawings.

I emphasized that even though the new drawing would look a lot different then the landscape, the students would be using some of the same technical skills. Plus, both drawings used a heavy dose of contour lines to outline the shapes,  no matter whether those shapes looked 3d or flat.

Students drew 5 vertical lines first- each one a different length than the others.
Next they added color using one of 3 color families- I threw in a quick introduction to analogous colors too.
The final step was to use a black crayon to trace their contour lines.

Bada bing, bada boom.

on the road.

The first lesson I did with the 3rd graders focused on line and 3d space. We looked at a print by an artist named Meme.

I talked to the students about the use of contour lines in the image, and how these lines outlined the shapes. We then looked at how Meme had made the drawing look 3d. Students identified that things in the front and things got smaller in the background. They also picked up on the change in value from foreground to background.

We then looked at Meme's use of diagonal lines on the road in the drawing. We identified that the road got smaller as the diagonals got closer and closer. We tried to come up with as many words to describe this difference- wide/narrow, thick/thin, fat/skinny, big/small, etc. This was a simple introduction to the basics of perspective.

My original plan was for students to execute their drawing in just black, white, but changed my mind before meeting with my first class. I'm glad I did. The variety of colors in the drawings makes looking at a large group of them more interesting.

Students drew in pencil first, traced everything but the sides of the road, and then added color with crayon. Students could choose the place their character was heading toward and they could style their character how they wanted as well. When they added color, I emphasized pressing harder in the front and lighter as things went back in space.

This lesson took the full hour, plus an additional 10 to 15 minutes of the next meeting time.

The two images above were done with the student's non-writing hand. She gets her cast off in a week. She can totally draw with both hands now!