Art History: Prehistoric Art

This year, I am excited to say that I have an Art History course that I am able to offer students college credit through SUNY Potsdam, the institution I attended and earned my degrees through.  While I originally had 3 students in it (which I thought was amazing, considering history is a tough sell at my district), a math class was moved during the summer and I lost two students, leaving me with one student.  Either way, it's still great, we are getting some bonding time, and I'm making art along with her!

We are using the Annotated Mona Lisa as a textbook for this class, and we began with Prehistoric Art.  In an attempt to make this class not just lecture (and I'm glad I decided on this because it would be really hard to lecture every day to ONE student), we are incorporating a historical art project every few cultures.  As part of the project requirements, my student can create whatever she wants, as long as she displays the characteristics of that culture AND uses an artistic technique by the culture, such as making her own brushes and paints, or using a paint technique or a material specific to that culture.

We started with prehistoric art, of course, and when we got to the project, she decided (and I thought it was a GREAT idea) to make a diorama for each culture!  So, as we progress through the year, she will have a pretty awesome, 3-D timeline made!  Along with each project, I ask her to write a two page essay that discusses her project in terms of the techniques and materials she used, how those might reflect the ancient culture, and how her project and decisions as a whole represents that culture.  In a college art history class, you usually have to write some sort of term paper, usually 10 pages minimum (at least I had to!).  The cooperating professor approved my plan of multiple 2 page essays, and as we progress through the year, I will teach her how to properly cite using the Chicago format of footnotes/end notes.

We used tissue paper, hot glue, and then Liquitex Spray Paint (which is INSANELY AWESOME!) to create the caves.  We also made our own egg yolk tempera, which we will utilize again for our Egyptian dioramas, except that we will have to make some gold paint!

My current student taking the class is a senior and is potentially going to college for art, whether she majors or minors in it.  She loves writing, so I've sort of tailored this class with her in mind.  Here is her first completed project and her first short essay, written completely by her without an edits from me:

          The Prehistoric Era dates back to about 35,000 BC and is one of the first eras known to create artwork. Artworks were created during this time mostly to adorn the body or to decorate.  The artwork created by people during this time period can be defined as cave paintings and small sculptures.  The artists, mostly female, would make all their own materials, such as the paint created from charcoal, clay, water, blood, and even urine.  The paintbrushes would also be handmade, from materials such as twigs, human hair, and grass.  Sculptures would be made of ivory, bone, stone and antlers.  This time period had a long lasting effect on artists and people around the world, as this was the beginning of the world of art.

         For this project, I chose to create a diorama to represent a cave filled with cave paintings, a fire, paints, and a cave woman.  I spray painted the diorama to look identical to a cave, and also built tissue paper up along the left side to give the cave a more realistic appearance.  I added texture to the inner part of the cave to show a rough, rock-like texture on the floor and walls.  Next, with the help of my teacher, I made my own paint from pigments, water and egg yolks.  This process was very interesting and I loved the experience.  I used these paints to decorate the inner walls of the cave, painting such things as wild animals, hunters, and hand prints. The idea for the wall paintings came from the notes I had taken in class, and are accurate depictions of what would have been present on cave walls.  I also added a human figure, a cave woman, to the diorama.  She is dressed in a leather "dress", which would have been created from an animal hide hunted, most likely, by the men.  I chose to add a woman over adding a man because most cave painters would be women, which we know because of the small hand prints visible on the walls.  The hand prints were used as a "signature" for the artwork, and can be found throughout many caves.  I created a fire displayed on the inside of the cave because the paintings were normally found deep inside the caves, where it would have been colder.  I also added some of the paint I made into small shells, since these were used to hold paint during this time period.

         Overall, I found this project to be a great experience and I really enjoyed it.  I believe my diorama accurately represents a cave woman and the wall paintings.  The overall process was unique because I've never made my own paint before, which I found to be interesting.  I also like that I added several identifiable factors into my diorama, which helped to show that it's based in the Paleolithic Era.

My diorama I made with my student.  :)  Not nearly as good as hers!

Sixth Grade Cave Paintings

My sixth graders have just finished up their first project, which was, of course, cave art!  When talking about curriculum for my elementary grade levels, sixth grade and kindergarten are really the only two levels where my projects tend to remain the same each year, and it really doesn't bother me either!  (Ask me about my high school curriculum?  It's ALWAYS changing!)

Don't get me wrong, I have yet to do cave paintings the same way more than once, but the premise is there.  This year, students received a huge piece of brown kraft paper.  We tore off the edges, crinkled up the paper, and then took it outside to create our rocks.  We used neutral chalk pastels to rub over the crinkled paper, and then used a paper towel to rub and blend the pastels together.

I HIGHLY suggest doing this process outside, as the chalk pastels tend to get really dusty.  Interested in seeing a previous years technique for creating our rocks?  We have used tempera on tag board in the past as well.

Now, here comes the fun part, where I kind of changed it up for my students a bit.  Once again, we did make our own egg yolk tempera paint.  If you're interested in seeing specifically how I do it with them, you can check out one of my blog posts from a previous year here.  Here's the adaption for this project from this year!  I did the best I could to turn my room into a cave!!  I pulled the blinds, covered up the cracks with black paper, and did my best to turn it into complete darkness.  Then?  I put a bon fire on my smartboard as their light source for painting!

These pictures aren't that great at showing how dark it was, but it was dark enough!  It was a bit comical too, as students started complaining that there was too much light coming through the windows and that this wouldn't work, but once all the lights were off and they had to work with just the fire out the smartboard, they found it was pretty difficult to see to paint accurately.

This was a super great experience for them and I definitely plan on incorporating the bon fire next year as well!  There was a lot of conversation about the actual project and the way they were painting.  Many noticed that their paintings got a bit better as their eyes adjusted to the darkness.

As for the bon fire video, it's pretty easy to find them on YouTube!  The video I used was actually an 8 hour video of a bonfire.  This is the specific video I used below.  It's nice and quiet, nothing distracting in the background...just the calming sounds of a bon fire crackling away!

 My goal next year is to actually use real charcoal, dirt and berries to create the paint.  I never seem to plan well enough in advance but I will next year!!

Here's a Little Catch-Up... (And Some Current Projects)

Third grade finished up the fall birch trees as their first project of the year about two weeks ago.  It's been slow going getting them started on their next project because we've had 1/2 days and assemblies that fell on their already sparse art days.  So, even though it's been almost three weeks later, we've only had one art day so far for starting their next unit!  Unfortunately, I have the feeling I won't get to see it be finished either before I go on maternity leave.

For the second 3rd grade unit, I decided to do a surrealism landscape drawing with the students.  As part of their Common Core ELA strands, the first book they are reading is from the Spiderwick Chronicles.  I figured that would be the perfect way to incorporate surrealism as it falls under the same category as fantasy...heck, it is fantasy!  On the first class of the unit, I took the students to the computer lab.  While we waited for their computers to log on, I showed them a brief power point about Salvador Dali and we talked about surrealism in art.

Once everyone was done, I had students open up Google Chrome and go to Switch Zoo.  Here, students had to create two different fantasy animals and print them.  By the end of class, they had to hand in whichever animal they wanted to use in their art project.  They also had to create an interesting name for their animal and they had to define surrealism for me at the bottom of their page (as their exit slip).

Next class, we will review surrealism, share a few animals with the class, and then talk about the project assignment, which will be to draw their creature in a surrealist habitat.

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My 3rd-6th grade 12:1:1 class is going to be doing a prehistoric cave project next.  This year, the way they push in with the "normal" classes changed and they started a bit later on the Early Man unit in Social Studies.  I did this version of the cave art project my first year of teaching with 6th graders, which you can see on Artsonia.

To start this project we needed to make our rock canvas.  To do this, I gave students large Manila paper.  We tore off the straight edges and then crumpled the paper (and ironically, "crumple" was one of their spelling words that week!).  After, I had the students quickly paint their paper, two at a time, with brown, red and black tempera at the sink.  The final step was to rinse off the extra paint.  The result, depending on how much is rinsed off, is a surface that looks like animal hide or a rock!

I will probably also have these students mix their own egg yolk tempera, like my 6th graders did earlier this year.  I anticipate that we will only need one more class period to finish these.

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These are the final zentangle projects from my art elective class.  Before we completed these, we had done the zentangled alphabets, which were a big success.  These weren't as much.  They were excited to do the alphabets, and excited to start these, but they petered out, especially with the glass paint as it dripped on the round surfaces so it was slow going on the completion.

I think next year if I do this project again, no matter what class I do it with, I'll have EVERYONE do a zentangled bowling pin and then we'll turn them into lamps!  When our one tech teacher saw me bringing the bowling pin in, he mentioned that he would be able to drill the hole all the way through for me if we wanted to do that.

For our next project in the Art Elective class, I'm asking students to do some Ben Heine inspired "Pencil vs. Camera" projects.  Students will be required to turn in three photographs of their own that have hand-drawn aspects added to change the photograph.  They're really enjoying these so far!

6th Grade: Prehistoric Cave Art

Sixth graders have finished their cave walls!  Last year I didn't get to do a cave art project with the students because they breezed through the unit in social studies and started right in on the Ancient Egyptians.  This year, I made sure I started this early, so as we have finished this up in art class, the students are just starting cave art in social studies...perfect timing!

Tomorrow is parent-teacher conference night so we managed to get this done just in time.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get the paper into those nice display strips I bought last year through the Parent's Association, but they were still useful to tape up the cave walls on.  (The crinkled paper just wouldn't slide in the strips!)

This project took us a total of about 2 1/2 class periods to complete.  On the first day, which was essentially the half day, I showed my power point about prehistoric art and we did the virtual tour of Lascaux Cave on the smartboard.

On the second day, we unrolled and took a huge sheet of brown butcher paper outside on the sidewalk.  I had the students all line up on both sides and in pairs.  Then then slowly crinkled and unfolded the paper to give it physical texture.  Next, we took natural colored chalk that I have and rubbed it all over the wrinkled paper.  Using paper towels, we wiped it to blend all the colors together.  One class did a better job blending the colors than the other, but then the other class did a better job (in my opinion) of filling their cave wall with large cave paintings! 

On the third day, we took about 15 minutes to talk about and mix our egg yolk tempera.  I gave each table four cups.  One had pigment in it, two were empty, and one had the egg yolk.  I sent one person to the sinks to fill one empty cup and get a paint brush for mixing.  In the other empty cup, I asked them to fill it about 2/3 full with the powdered pigment I gave their table.  Then, they had to slowly add water to create a paste, about the consistency of tooth paste.  Lastly, I had them add the paste mixture to the egg yolk, mix and shake.

I added these signs on the wall across from the cave walls...

My first year of teaching, I actually set up a real "cave" for the cave art we did.  That year, I had the students rip the edges and then crinkle Manila tag board.  We painted them with tempera and then quickly rinsed the tempera off the paper before it dried.  This created a similar effect to the chalk.  That year, we didn't make our own paint.  Then, I also had the students use chalk and paint on rocks to create a painting on an actual rock.  I set up my easy-up tent in the media center (I only put it up about half way) at our school and then attached blankets all the way around.  I pinned up all of the cave art inside on the blankets, laid the rocks down at the bottom along the edge of the blankets, and then set a lantern on the outside so people could crawl in like a real cave to view the artwork.  It was a huge success, but A LOT of work!  I set it up the next year for our art show as well (if you check out the 2012 Art Show page, you can see two pictures that sort of show the cave.  One shows a "cave man" inside the cave (it's a dark photo) and the other shows our other "cave man" standing outside of it!)

Up and Coming Elementary Projects

Elementary project posts are going to be far and fewer in between this year.  Since I only see them once a cycle, it's just going to take that much longer for us to finish quality projects.  Here's an overview of what I am currently doing with the elementary grades.  Some projects are repeats of last year, and some are brand new projects that I am starting off with for the first time.

Kindergarten
The kindergartners just finished up their first listening and learning strand of nursery rhymes.  I decided to forgo my usually beginning projects of the primary and secondary colors to start with shapes.  To go along with their nursery rhyme unit, we are doing "Hey Diddle Diddle" drawings.  So far we have worked one day on this. I gave students my shape practice sheet and then together, we drew a cow jumping over the moon, and the dish running away with the spoon (made sure we got two rhyming components in the drawing...).  Next class, I'll have them trace all their pencil lines with Sharpie marker, we'll talk about craftsmanship when it comes to coloring with crayons, and they will finish up coloring their projects for display.









1st Grade
In 1st grade, we are starting out with the pumpkin unit, just slightly altered to try and fit it into 2 1/2 class periods instead of 3-4.  We've so far worked one class on this.  On the first day, everyone got a piece of Manila drawing paper and I asked them to draw a pumpkin patch in 15 minutes.  We talked about how they drew their pumpkins vs. how a pumpkin really looks (most drew them perfect circles and didn't attempt to show the texture).  Then, I demonstrated on the board how to use flattened circles to draw pumpkins.  Students then turned their papers over and spent the rest of class drawing more realistic pumpkin patches.  Next class, I'll show them how to use more than one horizon line (and we'll talk about size) to create depth.  They'll draw their pumpkin patches and start blending on them with oil pastels.

2nd Grade
In second grade, the students have also just finished up their first listening and learning strand, which was fairy tales and tall tales.  I started this art project with them when they were reading Beauty and the Beast, so their project is designing Beast's castle.  We are VERY lucky to have a real Louis Tiffany stained glass window in our school.  It was bought and donated to the school by one of the original founders of the old school building (in memory of his mother).  I took this as an opportunity to talk about stained glass windows and to educate the students about how lucky they should feel to have a REAL artwork by a FAMOUS artist in their school!  So, for this project, students have to design a radial stained glass window (we are using transparency paper and Sharpies).  I created a simple castle pattern that students traced and then sponge painted brick patterns on (similar to how we did it for our 3rd grade castles last year).  So far, we have worked two periods on this project.  For the last class, students will cut a hold in the top of their castle to add their colored stained glass window, and they will get to cut out a draw bridge door and roofs for their castle towers out of construction paper.




3rd Grade
For 3rd grade, I'm sticking with an oldie.  We're doing our fall birch trees.  Only change is that this year I bought watercolor pencils, so we will be using those instead of crayons.  So far, we have worked one class on these and we have taped off our birch trees.

4th Grade
4th grade is also doing a repeat.  We're starting off with value and will be doing fall value drawings and then doing the linocut leaf prints around the border.

5th Grade
Another repeater.  I'm skipping the painted color wheels this year (because those took forever last year).  We've spent one class doing the plate color wheel so they have a color wheel to reference and take notes of the different color families on the back, and now we are going to jump right into the complementary colored checkerboards.  Next class, we'll roll out our slab boards.  This year, instead of glazing/underglazing them, I'm going to have them paint the boards with acrylic paint.  Less waste of the more expensive materials.  They'll also be making their checker pieces out of model magic instead of kiln fire clay.  Again, less waste of the more expensive materials.

6th Grade
Finally, 6th grade will be starting off with cave art.  They are currently doing geography in social studies, but afterwards they will be doing the prehistoric world.  My unit should give them base knowledge for that (great way to connect curriculum and get common core points!).  Last year we didn't do a cave art project.  This year, we've spent 1 1/2 class periods on it.  For the first 1/2 period, I gave my power point and we talked about cave art and took the virtual tour through Lascaux Cave.  For the first whole period, we rolled out a huge piece of brown butcher paper, wrinkled it to make it look like a rock, and then used chalk pastels to "age" it.  Next class, we are going to mix our own egg tempera, so they can get a feeling of what it's like to make their own paint.  I will be hanging their rock on my display strips and we'll go down and actually paint on the rock wall, just like a real cave artist.

Special Education Classes
I have two separate special education classes this year; a K-3 class and a 3-6 class.  The K-3 class did complete their first project all in one class period, and I must say that I was extremely impressed with the progress (and maturity) they found over summer!  In their classroom, they made leaves for a bulletin board, so I continued with that theme.  I asked them to draw a fall tree with good details (similar to what I have 4th grade do).  I was SO HAPPY to see them using the "y" and "v" technique to draw realistic trees!  Then, I pulled out my rubber leaves and I had them make a leaf print border around their drawings.

The 3-6 class is starting off with learning about the history of NYS in their classroom, so on a whim, I decided to do a Statue of Liberty project with them.  A majority of the students in the class have been there for a year or two, and they learned about the Statue of Liberty before, so this was a bit of a review.  We talked about the statue and then I taught them a little bit about Keith Haring.  We ended on Haring's Statue of Liberty artwork.  I am having these students do a Keith Haring-like rendition of the statue on Styrofoam to my Styrofoam prints.  This should only take one