ooooh, color:)

This week the 2nd graders are looking at the work of the Oakland based husband and wife design team of Ryan and Sarah. Otherwise known as Lab Partners. These two make some pretty fresh designs and illustrations. Their work has a little bit of a retro feel and I love their use of line and color.

I had not done a printmaking project with the 2nd graders yet this year, so when I was looking at the Lab Partners website as research for a possible 5th grade project, I found the perfect candidate.

This is called "Colors are Magical". I thought the combo of white lines and black lines, plus the combo of curved and angular was fantastic. When I shared the image with the kids they felt the same way. When I revealed the image to each class I got a big, "awwwwww..."

We talked about the types of shapes we saw in the image and what the background shape reminded them of- diamonds, gems, and crystals. We also talked about how the body position of the girl makes it look like she was ready to fly and how her expression totally went with the title of the piece.

Students drew out a boy or girl in pencil first. They added the hair last, after I modeled different hairstyles they might choose. Then they traced the figure in black permanent marker.

Then the students worked on the styrofoam plate  portion of the project. They shaped, colored and colored it, and then we worked together to stamp it on top of the figure drawing.

The kids loved seeing the two parts come together. If students finished early, they could color their styrofoam plate again, sothat it could be part of a larger group print that would be featured in our annual student show at the end of the year. Those of you who follow this blog, know that I can not help myself when it comes to identifying and using cooperative work in my plans and exhibits:)

Check out the results below. It think they are pretty darn magical.

wavin.

The kinders looked at the work of California artist Erik Abel this week. We checked out his website together and saw an old photo of him. It's a hoot:), and it does a great job of introducing his two loves- art and the water. We also saw more recent photos of him doing what he loves to do.

We then looked at the illustration portion of his site and to see some of his beautiful water and landscape images. He has a great way with shape, line, and color. We ended up focusing on the image below.

I love the combination of wave shape and seascape inside that shape. I asked the kids what they saw- water, a wave, lined, and colors. Also got some responses like hands, birds, dolphins due to the shape of the wave, too, which is cool because the simplicity of the abstract wave can lend itself to multiple reads.

Next, I talked about Erik's use of warm and cool colors. I then shared an example of what ours would look like. I emphasized the use of warm and cool and that we would be pressing hard and soft in different places to create bold and light colors like they did with the Kate Spain flowers from last week.

I started each student off with the inside of the wave already drawn on their paper. A backwards C shape. We used a dot to mark how tall we wanted the wave and another to the right side to mark how wide we wanted it. We then built the outline of the wave shape together.

Once the wave was drawn we created the land mass in the middle. Sky color lines came next and we added warm colors to the sky, pressing hard in parts and softly in others. We did a little mixing in the sky to create orange or yellow orange as well. The same process was followed for the water.

Even though the process was direct, I think there is still a lot of variety in the pieces when looking at a large group of them. With the past few lessons with the kinders, I wanted to emphasize hard and soft coloring so they could bring that to shading and 3d volumes in first grade.

Thanks for the inspiration, Erik!

poppin.

and lockin.

no, not really, but the 3rd graders ARE making some popsicle inspired art this week. We looked at the art of Sean Finocchio and the pop cart, Chiquita, of local pop shop Viva Pops as inspiration.

Sean is an LA based artist at 33 Stewart Avenue and makes art about what he sees in the neighborhoods around him. He likes to take different routes home from work to see new and interesting things. I love that! He likes to capture stuff that has a 70's flavor to it and as a child of that era, that holds a lot of appeal for me:)

Viva Pops is a local popsicle shop owned by Lisa Altmann. They have amazing pops, a cool spray paint mural in their shop, and a cute little cart called Chiquita.

The classes and I look at Sean's painting of a pop cart and the cart of Viva. We talk about what makes both images look 3d... the use of consistent diagonals.

We talk about seeing these types of carts in our neighborhoods and at framers markets. After that i explain that we'll use a pop cart as the focus of our project... and that we'll be using spray paint to help us create our work. At this point the kids tend to go a little bonkers:)

I share a finished example of the project and then I share one that isn't glued together so they can see the steps involved, in reverse.

The first thing we do is fold a 9x9 square into a triangle and then fold it again to quarter it. Then we draw a few, or more popsicles on the triangle. When students cut the shapes out, I ask them to save the cut out pieces so they may use them later. What's left is our stencil, basically a popsicle flavored snowflake:)

Then we go out and spray.

When we come back in, we draw the cart together on a smaller white sheet. Using cylinders and rectangular prisms to make our carts look 3d. When adding color to the carts, I ask students to press hard on one side of shapes and light on the other to make them look even more 3d.

Once the coloring is complete students cut out their carts and place them on their spray painted paper. They also arrange some of the pops they cut out  on top to make the composition even more engaging. I stress placing everything on the paper before starting to glue. This is their rough draft. If they are satisfied with what they have, then they glue everything in place. If not, they move stuff around until they like what they have.

I'm about halfway through the 3rd grade classes this week, the results have been really cool, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what the other classes do.

the kinders are bloomin.

Last week the kindergarten classes and I looked at the patterns and designs of Kate Spain. We talked about how she repeats shapes, lines, and colors to create interesting patterns for gift wrap, pillows, aprons, and all sorts of other textiles. We also noticed that she uses a lot of interesting natural shapes in these designs.

For the lesson we focused on a drawing from Kate's website.

The students made their own flower designs inspired by this flower. They used a couple lids in the beginning of the drawing to help them with the circle shapes. After that they used lots of U's and V's to make flower petals.

I asked students to press hard in places and more softly in others, so they could see the difference in color value that hand pressure makes.

Color choices were entirely up to the students, so there is a lot of variety in them when viewed as a group.

The last step was to cut out the flower from the 12x12 square they drew it on.

I'm thinking that the pieces selected for the art show will be grouped to create a larger floral pattern in the exhibit, since Kate's work is so pattern oriented. Probably somewhere near the 3rd grade Matt W. Moore pieces will go.