The Art Room was a very busy
place the evening of Open House. Thanks to everyone that was able to stop
by. Students were very pleased and excited about being able to show you
their portfolios and all the work they have done. I was impressed by how
students walked into the room and went directly to their class cubbies to
retrieve their portfolios. I am sorry though that there were so many people
in the room that I was not able to speak to all of you individually. I guess
that is a good problem to have as it really was an opportunity for students
to show off their work. Please consider stopping by again during Parent
Conferences on November 24 and 25 to see what else we have done.
Several grade levels have completed a self-portrait for their portfolio. This is one of our benchmark drawings done each year. We measure our faces to see where our eyes are and are amazed to find that they are in the middle of our face. We discuss the lines, shapes and textures found in our faces and even talk about color. We all experimented with a variety of colored pencils to achieve the right color for our face. Many students found they needed to use at least three different colors to get the right one for their skin. They also discovered that using the point of their pencil gave them great lines for the strands of their hair but then they needed to use the side of their pencils to get the soft, smooth texture they needed for the skin. They also drew a background for their portrait that indicates a place they like to be. All students will be doing this benchmark assignment within the next few weeks. These drawings are the back cover of our portfolios this year.
Standard #7 of our Visual Arts Curriculum deals with connecting disciplines and states that students will make connections between the Visual Arts and other disciplines. I have found that when we can help students make connections between what they are learning in their classroom and what we are doing in the Art Room, output is much better. Students are able to draw from their knowledge and put it into a visual format. Here are some examples.
September has flown by and autumn is upon us. What a beautiful time
of year to live in Vermont! We are harvesting our gardens, looking at birds
fly south, and watching the leaves change to beautiful fall colors. So of
course all these factors play a part in our Art projects and make the
connection to classroom curriculum.
Second graders and students in the multi-age classrooms are now using
the beautiful colors of fall leaves as inspiration for a design lesson on
the technique of overlap. Artists use this technique to depict distance and
depth in their art work. Students looked at a variety of leaves from oak to
ash to birch and oak. They drew these on their papers being sure to overlap
at least some of them. We then discussed where the leaves were. Are they
falling from the trees caught in a gust of wind? Or are they on the grass or
a path in the woods? Once they decided, they colored in the background. We
used crayons and often used several colors on the same leaf. Some color is
dark and strong, while others are light and soft as if the leaf has flipped
over and is the underside. These are hanging in the hallways for you to see.
Kindergarten students have been learning how to create prints from leaves by rubbing over them with crayons. They have used this technique of printmaking to create a background for torn paper trees. The rubbings give the impression of a wind blown landscape. Students are now looking at the shapes, lines and colors in pumpkins. We learned how to mix paint to get rich browns, oranges and greens. This week we are cutting these painted papers to create a pumpkin patch similar in style to that used by illustrator Shari Halpern for the book It’s Pumpkin Time by Zoe Hall.
Second graders study Vermont and it’s place in New England. Years ago it was rumored that there were more cows in Vermont than there were people. That made me think of Vermont artist, Woody Jackson. You may know him for his paintings on Ben and Jerry’s trucks. Students learned how to use rectangles and curved lines to draw Vermont’s now famous black and white cows. Backgrounds of bright colors were added to create the effect of fall leaves and skies. These are will become the covers of their portfolios for this year.
From
Oceans
to the Universe
Two other assignments we have worked on have become the covers for
our portfolios. First graders have been studying the ocean and sea life, so
we did crayon resists of underwater scenes. The wax of crayons resists the
water in paint and shows through. We laid plastic wrap over our paintings
while they were still wet. When dry, where the plastic wrap was you see
lines of lighter color giving the effect of rippled water.
Students in Mrs. Bailey and Mrs. Gulizio’s third grade classrooms
have been studying the solar system. We created the universe by spattering
sheets of dark construction paper with white paint. It was an easy way to
create a star filled background for our drawings of planets and space
vehicles. These assignments have made great covers for our portfolios.
Sunflowers
Who can help but smile at sunflowers as they turn their heads to the sun, then begin to fall from the weight of the seeds they bear. First graders have been studying Holland and what better artist to introduce to them than Vincent Van Gogh. He worked as a preacher, a bookseller and a teacher before starting to paint at the age of 27. His first paintings were dark and brooding so no one bought them. He then moved to the south of France and began to use vivid colors and lots of it. He daubed bold reds, fiery oranges and bright yellows on his canvases in thick globs. No one would buy these either! “Sunflowers” is one of these paintings. People at that time thought paintings of flowers should be soft, light and airy; not like they were on fire. In the late 1980’s, the “Sunflowers” sold for $39.8 million!
In Art class, we looked at
several of his paintings of an individual sunflower and vases full of
sunflowers. We discovered that he used circles and triangles in his drawings
and paintings, and lots and lots of paint. Students in fourth grade used
construction paper crayons to add color to their drawings of sunflowers.
These crayons are softer than our regular wax crayons and allow colors to be
blended. They also make it easier to create the illusion of textures. First
graders drew and painted their own sunflowers using warm colors. Do you know
what the warm colors are? Ask a first grader! Even though we were all
drawing sunflowers, every piece of art work was different. Some were a field
of flowers, a vase or a
bouquet, and some were even only part of a flower. They were great! I love
seeing how students take an assignment and turn it into such a creative
piece of art!
All these assignments are made more meaningful by the connection that they make to classroom studies.
One of my favorite paintings is Piet Mondrian’s “Evening:Red Tree.” Mondrian (1872-1944) grew up in Holland. After he finished his regular schooling, he studied art and began his career painting real-life landscapes and portraits of people. After a visit to the galleries in Paris in 1910, he started painting abstract images using vertical and horizontal lines and geometric shapes. He wanted to create a design that felt just right, with perfect harmony between the lines and colors. His most famous paintings, such as “Broadway Boogie-Woogie” are made entirely of straight lines and primary colors. These works have been called the simplest form of Cubism.
In Art class, I ask fourth graders to find similarities between “Evening:Red Tree” and German artist, Caspar David Friedrich’s “Tree with Crows.” These paintings were done a hundred years a part, yet students found many similarities. We then discussed how they were different. Some students thought they were scary, yet the line and space used by both artists are very similar. For our assignment, I asked students to draw a tree that filled the space of their paper and depicted a mood or feeling. These are hanging up in the cafeteria. Did they succeed?
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