1st Grade: Winter Landscapes with Depth

My 1st graders finished up these awesome winter landscapes right before we left for the winter break.  I really like introducing the concept of depth to 1st grade because I think they can actually understand it and work with it in simpler forms.  In the past, I've done pumpkin landscapes with depth and a Northern Lights landscape, so I decided to combine the two for this year's depth landscape!

This project took two days and about 10 minutes in a third class to complete.  On the first day, I showed students a video about how the Northern Lights are created (of which this fits really well into their Common Core Listening & Learning strand about Astronomy!).  We then got down to work drawing our landscape out.

Students used black oil pastel on black paper.  I first asked them to draw a big snowman, just the body, towards the bottom edge of their paper, and then a horizon line behind it.  I posed the question, "If you wanted to draw a snowman in the background, how would you do it?"  Most of them understood that it had to be drawn smaller, but I showed them how to draw it smaller and farther up on their paper.  Again, I had them draw a horizon line behind that snowman.  Then, I asked, "What if you wanted to draw a snowman in between those two snowmen? In the middle-ground?" It was like a light-bulk turned on above their heads! 

We added the mountains next, and then used three colors to create the Northern lights in the sky.  This all happened on day 1.

On day 2, we talked about how we were going to color all the snow.  If snowmen are white, and the snow on the ground is white, I explained that they would have to do something a little different to the snow so they wouldn't blend together.  Luckily, there was snow on the ground outside the windows so we could look at how the shadows from the building look blue in the snow!

After the snow was colored, the mountains and the details on the snowmen were the last things left!

3rd Grade: Wayne Thiebaud Cake Drawings

Hopefully I'm going to be playing catch-up these next few days!  I've got SO MANY projects to share from before the winter break, it's not even funny!  Things have been insanely hectic with the holidays, conferences, and committees at school.  I also recently became a consultant for Jamberry in order to help pay medical bills from last year.  My blog has unfortunately taken a back seat to all of these things, but it's my goal to make sure that stops happening!

This next project I'm going to share is probably one you've seen on Pinterest.  My students in 3rd grade LOVED making these oil pastel Wayne Thiebaud cakes!  (Did you know his last name is pronounced "tee-bow"?  Like the football player?  I didn't until I presented this project!).  This is the first time I've used this artist as a reference in my classes, and the students just loved it.  I find that they always love oil pastels anyways, because it's so easy for them to be successful with color blending and value, but the added fact that they were designing cakes like the Cake Boss just made it even cooler!

I am in LOVE with this one!  There is a local, elementary art show coming up and I wasn't sure if I'd have four pieces to send to it, but I do believe that this one may be going! :)

This project even correlates with Common Core math, as students were turning basic shapes into 3-D forms.  We used vocabulary such as cylinders and cubes to describe the shapes of our cake tiers.  Students practiced drawing their cakes on a worksheet for the first day.  Then, they drew them on 12"x18" black paper the second day, and I demonstrated how to blend the colors together on the cake tiers, adding in a little black for shadows.  On the third day, students finished their tiers and colored the background, finishing them up!

Art 7: Elements of Art Project

After finishing up our graffiti unit, the next unit of focus in my Art 7 classes was the elements of art.  I created a note packet with snipets of worksheets and information that I "borrowed" from Pinterest.  Each page in the note packet concentrated on a single element and had some sort of drawing exercise, as well as vocabulary and definitions.

These pages took us about two class periods to complete.  Then, we were on to the first project.  The requirements were that students had to write the word(s) Elements (of Art) in the middle of their page using an interesting lettering style (pulling in from the graffiti unit).  Next, they had to split the page into seven sections, drawing lines through their letters.  This was tough for some students!  Lastly, they had to illustrate each section to represent one of the elements.  They were not allowed to write which element they illustrated...if I couldn't tell by looking at their drawing, then they had to go back and review that element.

In general, I thought this project turned out OK.  This group of 7th graders is struggling across the board in all area of academics, and it's starting to show in their art as well.  They were not very creative when it came to their designs.  Almost everyone did a brick wall for texture...not very thought out!  There was a lot of copying going on, and very few followed the directions or paid attention to the rubric very well.  In some cases, I asked for 5+ examples of an element in their picture, and they only gave 1 or 2.  I actually think that I might replace the infographic project for my Studio Art students next year with this project.

The final project in the elements of art unit is a hard-edge tempera painting.  Students are in the process of finishing these up after our winter break (and delays for -degree temperatures!).