Studio Art: Painting Unit, Tempera

For our second painting in my Studio Art painting unit, students made their own egg-yolk tempera to do still life paintings.  I thought for sure that I would get complains about the subject matter, but they loved it!  Making their own paint really helped them to understand what a pigment, binder, and solvent is tool  We made our paint the same way I have my 6th graders do it for the cave art project.

Every day at the end of the day, i would put the paint in the refrigerator next door to make sure it didn't start smelling rancid from the eggs.

This project took us about a total of two weeks from start to finish.  Students chose an area of the still life below to draw.  It was set up in the middle of my room for the entire time...in that time period, I lost a fake banana and had two bottles break during clean up, of all times. :(

As we started the process of painting, we painted the background first, using cool colors because they recede.  Next, I had them choose a neutral color for the ground/cloth, and lastly they were encouraged to use warm colors for the bottles. 

This student did an AMAZING job, and it breaks my heart because she has such low self-esteem about it.  :(  It was a struggle to get her to do this all on her own, but she did it!  She totally has her own painting style, but I don't think she feels comfortable enough to embrace it yet.

This student has struggled all year but he did what I would consider a great job, based on his past projects!  I'm so proud of some of these guys...they really got into the painting!  This student is so psyched about our next project...I can't wait to see what he does then!

Again, I had students mat their own artworks too.  They are getting so much better at this!  It makes me proud, and them, to have their artwork framed in such a way.  I've decided that I must make it a priority to make sure I have enough mat board for a school year, at least on the high school end.  It's going to make my art show look that much more professional too. :)

What really surprised me about this project, is that the students asked why we didn't do a black and white drawing of the still life first!  Wait, what?  I figured they would get bored drawing and then painting the same thing...but now this idea is on my radar for next year!  I think they saw my projects from high school, which I have hanging above my computer, and liked the idea.

Our current and last project of the painting unit is the cubist superhero paintings in acrylic.  We have just started those so expect a post about them in a week or two. :)

3rd Grade: Georgia O'Keeffe Landscapes

Ok, this is a project that I have been waiting AN ENTIRE YEAR to do!  I saw it on my blog roll via Painted Paper while I was in the middle of my usual fall birch tree paintings with 3rd grade.  I usually do a fall, winter, and spring birch tree project with that level in order to teach depth in a landscape but I wanted to change it up a bit this year.  I really love the birch trees but I am actually getting tired of doing them so I switched to this project for the fall landscape.  What's great is that it only took us two class periods to complete these, whereas the birch tree paintings take 3-4, and when you only see the students once every six days, that's a lot of time to stretch out a project.

This is also an awesome project to do because I live in Northern New York, not very far from Lake George where Georgia O'Keeffe painted these!  Many of my students have been there on vacation so it was a way for them to connect to O'Keeffe and the project we were doing.

I basically took the directions for this project verbatim from Painted Paper.  After I presented Georgia O'Keeffe using a power point, we discussed depth and how to make things look farther away or closer to you in a painting.  On that same day, we painted the sky first using light blue paint and we dabbed white in to make clouds.  Next, we left a space and painted the water using dark blue.  I showed students how to streak in white and black to give the illusion of light reflecting off the lake.  Lastly, we added mountains in between the water and sky using brown and a little bit of black paint.

On the second day, we talked about depth again.  We looked at O'Keeffe's fall landscape again and then observed the trees outside the classroom, noticing the difference in details that can be seen in the trees right outside the window versus across the street.  I demonstrated how to dab the yellow and red paint together to create fall trees (also a quick review on primary and secondary colors!).  Some students chose to add a thin line of trees at the base of the mountain.  Once they finished the trees, I had them get a skinny paint brush to add tree trunks and branches to the foreground trees.

My example, from start to finish.

2nd Grade: Imperial China Still Life Paintings

For 2nd grade's second project of the school year, they learned about Imperial China and the origins of blue glaze.  This corresponded with the NYS Common Core Listening & Learning Strand of Early Asian Civilizations, so it was a perfect lesson to use!

I did this project two years ago and pulled it out of storage for this group.  Unfortunately, I have yet to receive my clay that I ordered (it was never ordered by my business office over summer...luckily they were still able to get it for me though!), otherwise I would have actually done real pottery and blue glaze with the students.

This project essentially took us 2 1/2 days to complete.  Students received about 15 minutes to finish up their castle collages and then I showed them a power point about Imperial China.  Students went back to their tables, chose a vase to trace, and then drew their vase design on it.  During the power point, I stressed the importance of nature on their pottery, which the students were then able to connect to their religion, which was an A+ in my book on connecting to that Common Core!  Students were supposed to create a design that included nature and decorative patterns, just like the pictures of the vases we looked at in the power point.

On the second day, I taught students about tints and shades.  I gave each table an egg carton with blue, white and black paint and then let them go to town mixing colors to paint their vases.

On the last day, students cut out their vase.  They cut a piece of construction paper in half hot dog style and glued it to the bottom of colored tag board.  We talked about placement of the vase and glued that into place, leaving plenty of room to paint flowers.  I stressed that the vase should NOT sit directly on the horizon line, but also not directly on the bottom of their paper.  Finally, I gave students colored tempera to paint their flowers.

Now, here's my reflection on this project.  The original vase drawings and designs were very good.  They were all nature related, had some great dragons drawn, etc.  However, when it came to painting those finely drawn details, the students struggled.  That's something I'll keep in my for future painting projects to try and teach more in depth.

I just wanted to share these other two paintings...One 2nd grade class had the third day of the project taught to them by a non-art certified substitute teacher...a sub that is very on top of things with the students.  All of the other paintings above came from the other 2nd grade class, taught the last class by myself.  ALL of the still life paintings (except for maybe 4 of them) from the first 2nd grade class had flowers painted like these two...flowers painted around the vase instead of like they are in the vase.  I used the same examples when I taught the class as what I left the substitute.  It will be interesting to see if this trend of understanding continues as the year continues!