3rd Grade - Musical Picasso Collage
This was another lesson that I borrowed from my mentor teacher. I really like art lessons that incorporate art history, I think it’s important for students to understand that the arts have had a significant cultural impact on the world in which we live! Art IS fun, but it’s ALSO important!!!
This lesson takes a look at Pablo Picasso and cubism. The way I explained cubism to 3rd graders was that it (cubism) basically “breaks things into pieces, and then puts them together again in new ways that don’t always make sense”. We looked at some of Picasso’s artwork that focused on music as subject matter, and talked about how art and music are related.
For the project itself, I had the students start out by drawing musical instruments from life. I borrowed some instruments from the music teacher and put a few of them on every desk. I wanted each student to have two instruments drawn before moving forward.
The following two lessons focused on value and warm/cool colors. One instrument was to be shaded in with a variety of values, and the other with either warm or cool colors. They used oil pastels for the latter. When their two instruments were completed, we put them on the back-burner for a few days while we readied our collage backgrounds. I talked to them about rhythm and balance, and had them fill their backgrounds with a variety of shapes, colors, and values on which to eventually glue their instruments. Finally they got to cut up their instruments into pieces, and glue them down in new and interesting ways. The final pieces were wonderful, and will hopefully be hung in the music room eventually!
2nd Grade - Gustav Klimt Designs
I borrowed this lesson from my mentor teacher. It was such a fun lesson to do during my student teaching, that I decided to modify it a bit and give it a shot this year in my own classroom.
We started by talking in length about Art Nouveau, or “New Art”. We focused heavily on Gustav Klimt and his use of gold background, shapes, and spirals to create interesting designs and compositions. The major points I wanted the students to identify were his heavy use of shapes, groups, overlapping, and spirals.
I then had the students begin their own collages inspired by Gustav Klimt’s Tree of Life painting. We started by selecting either gold, silver, or copper paint, and creating a background on which to glue our collage. Once our backgrounds were painted we began to cut shapes. I taught the students how to cut multiple shapes at once by folding their paper. I made sure that the students had both large and small versions of every shape they made so that we’d be able to make interesting overlaps later on.
Once everything was ready, we started to put together our collages. Rather than creating an actual tree, I wanted to the students to create a unique design. This would encourage each student to create something of their own, inspired by the artist, rather than flat out copying his work. The only real guidelines that I gave them were that they had to include groups, overlapping, and that they couldn’t make a “picture” using their shapes, it had to be a design. At the very end, students filled in any empty space with spirals.
The results were outstanding. Collectively, the work created a cohesive display that demanded the viewers attention. Everyone who walked by - teacher and student alike - stopped to look at and read about what the second grade did. The work was even more impressive when it was examined up close and you could see each piece was a unique work of art.
I really was blown away by the results of this project, and the second grade students were overjoyed to have their work displayed in the main hallway by the front entrance of the school!
Kindergarten - Mixed Up Animals
To follow up my line lesson, I decided to talk with my kindergarten about shapes. We started by reading Eric Carle’s Mixed Up Chameleon (my favorite Carle title!). We then had a discussion about what kinds of animals we saw in the story, and what kinds of animals they would mix up if they could make their own mixed-up-animals.
The students were overjoyed to find out that they were in fact, going to make their own mixed up animals! We spent a whole day cutting out shapes from different colored papers. We had a discussion about kinds of shapes, and I drew some on the smartboard so that they would have something to reference. This was a great opportunity to get those flex those fine motor skills - somes students had not had much experience cutting before and needed some assistance and extra guidance. Over all though we ended up with a ton of fantastic and interesting shapes.
The following class I showed the students how to arrange their shapes to create mixed up animals. I would hold up a shape and ask them what part of an animals I could make with this. I also named specific animals and asked them what kinds of shape I needed to make them. Once I was confident that they understood what I wanted from them, I let them go to their work stations and start gluing. The results are posted in these pictures.
We also had a discussion about what kinds of animals they created, and what shapes they used to create them. Listening to a room full of 5 year olds describe their wacky creations was a ton of fun!
Kindergarten - Mixed up Lines
Kindergarten is quite possibly the most fun grade to work with. Kindergarten students are eager to learn, cute as buttons, and have a genuine joy to them that really just brightens up your day. I had a blast teaching this lesson on lines to my kindergarten students this year.
I was inspired by one of Mrs. Brown’s art lessons. I liked the idea so I modified it a bit to suit my teaching style and gave it a shot, the results were fantastic.
We started by talking about different kinds of lines - I actually had the students stand up and act out the kinds of lines they named. One student, for example, hopped around the room like a “dotted line”, another weaved in and out through the desks to show me how a ”zig-zag line” moves. It was a good time!
After we talked for about 10 minutes about lines, I showed the students how to set up a grid of all the different lines we talked about. I wanted them to create four different lines going “up and down”, and two lines going “side-to-side” using crayons. Once the lines were drawn, I showed them how to add color to their grids using tempera paints.
We talked about how to hold the paint brush, how to get enough paint on the brush, and how to wipe the brush off so that their paper didn’t get too wet. I did not go into warm/cool colors, but I did group all the warm colors together and the cool colors together. My thought process here was that when they did learn warm and cool colors in later grades, they would be used to seeing those particular colors together, making it easier to understand.
Studio Art (9th-10th Grade) Vance Kirkland Dot Painting:
Up until this point I hadn’t really done any materials-intensive projects with my high school students, and I wanted to make sure to do one so that I had experience with materials management at the secondary level. My cooperating teacher was going to begin a surrealism painting project when I left, so I chose to do an “intro-to-paint” project to prepare the students for it.
I wanted to make sure they knew how to manage the paint studio, how to mix colors, and some basic paint application techniques. I was inspired by a Vance Kirkland project that I found on incredible art department. I chose Kirkland because his work drew a lot of influence from aboriginal dreamtime paintings, so I was able to also include a multicultural aspect to this project.
We began by priming our canvas with gesso, and then applying a layer of color for our backgrounds. Students then had to, using analogous colors, mix tints and shades to “splatter” onto their backgrounds. I created a “splatter-station” with cardboard boxes to contain the mess.
Once students had splattered their paint, I had them look for the interesting shapes that the spatters made and then emphasize them with “dots” of different tints and shades of analogous colors. Students were also given the option of using an accent color outside of their color scheme if they chose too. We used different sized dowels to paint the dots. Above are some examples of what they came up with.
Advanced Digital Photography (11th-12th Grades) Hockney Photographic Collage:
The students in this class already knew how to take a photo, they covered that in their intro photography class, so I really wanted to do something that showed them what else they can do with photography as an artistic medium. I decided to do a David Hockney inspired photographic collage.
We talked about Hockney’s work, and how it was inspired by analytic cubism. We compared and contrasted some of Picasso’s paintings to Hockney’s photo-collages, they students got a real kick out of talking about painting in a photo class! Once we did that I gave the students their assignment: Pick an interesting person, object, or place, and take photos!!! I showed them how to imagine a grid over their scene, and how each section of the grid becomes one photograph. I asked them to take at least 25 pictures each.
When they came back to class the next week, I showed them how to use photoshop to import, manipulate, and arrange their photo-collages. They picked up on it right away, and the work they produced was beautiful! Unfortunately I can’t post the portraits online for obvious reasons, but believe me they are beautiful! Attached to this post are some examples of the students work.
Studio Art (9th-10th Grade) Character Design:
A central point in my philosophy of art education is that, in addition to fine art, students must be exposed to real-world applications of art, or ways that they can utilize art concepts and skills while still bringing home a paycheck and having health insurance! I decided to put this into practice during my high school student teaching placement by introducing my students to character design - a skill that is used across numerous art industries.
I started by having the studio art class go through a “crash course” in design. We focused on silhouettes, proportion, balance, and expressions. Then we spent a few days brainstorming characters; I wanted the characters to have a “purpose”, or something that they stood for or believed in. That purpose would then be supported visually by exaggerating proportions and emphasizing different attributes of the characters.
We then looked at industry standard model sheets. Theses model sheets are used to give animators or 3D modelers as much visual information about the character as possible so that they can be effectively animated or reproduced during the production phase of the animation/game/comic book process.
The pictures above are some examples of what my students came up with. I had a lot of fun during this unit, as did the students from what I could tell!
Special Needs Grades 3/4/5
During my elementary student teaching I had the opportunity to work with several self-contained special needs classes. For most of my placement I observed these classes, however, once I became more comfortable with the students and their 1 on 1’s, my cooperating teacher decided it was time for me to take over some of these classes as well.
We talked a lot about different ideas, but eventually settled on doing something tactile. What I wound up doing was a “Texture Box”. Essentially it is an egg carton with objects that have different textures inside of it. My cooperating teacher has worked extensively with these students and has done this lesson in the past with other classes, so she was able to give me a lot of great advice on this.
I had each student identify the texture of the object: “bumpy, fluffy, rough” and then glue the object into the box. After the object was glued, an accompanying slip of paper was then put into the box with the texture written on it. Students then used those slips of paper to locate the textures within the box. Once they were done, the students could then take their boxes back to their regular classrooms with them to use as a texture game later on.
Overall this was an extremely successful lesson. We even had a breakthrough with one student in particular who has very limited speech - he was able to verbally identify every texture in his box! It was such a rewarding moment, both for him and myself. He was so proud of himself! I am looking forward to working more with special needs students in the future!
5th Grade Silhouette Scenes.
One of my favorite artists, Michel Gagné, inspired this lesson. I had my fifth graders look at Gagné’s work on the Spectre Bride. We talked a lot about silhouettes, monochromatic and analogous colors, and atmospheric perspective.
The students were to create four thumbnail sketches where they had a clearly defined back, middle, and foreground that were described by using a light, medium, and dark value. Then we transferred those thumbnails onto monochromatic or analogous colored paper that we layered together to create these awesome scenes. We added foam core pieces in between each layer to add a sense of depth to the artwork.
In art, we are always talking about different layers in drawings or paintings. What I really liked about this project though, is that we actually physically separated those layers for students. I think this really helped them to develop a more thorough understanding of how to convey space in a 2-dimmensional piece of artwork.
4th Grade Mood Paintings.
Originally I was going to do a ceramic project with the 4th grade, however, when the clay did not arrive on time I had to come up with something on the fly. I looked over the art curriculum to see what else they hadn’t yet worked on, and I decided to do a painting unit in which they explored mood through color.
I had my students look at Louisa Chase’s “Cloudburst”, De Goya’s “Spring”, and Charles Burchfield’s “September Wind and Rain”. We talked about the different colors and weather in each painting, and how they added a mood or emotion to the work.
I then had my students break up into pairs, and assigned each pair a mood. Together, the pairs had to complete a work sheet in which they described different ways to use only color and weather to express the assigned mood. They also had to create thumbnail sketches, or small rough rough drafts, of images they could eventually turn into a painting.
I’m glad I had them work together at first, I think having someone to talk it out with really helped them grasp the concept.
The images included in this post are some of the finished products. We used flat washes of paint to cover large areas, and then liquid tempera to fill in the details. Overall I am very happy with the way these paintings turned out. It was a challenge at first, but worthwhile in the end!
Kindergarten Texture Mosaics!
This was a great unit that lasted a little over a month. It started out as a unit on texture - I had kids actually touch things like their hair, the rug, their shoes, and talk about the way these different things felt. I really wanted to drive home the idea that texture can describe both the way things feel and look.
We made two major texture based artworks, one was a tempera painting that we put saran wrap over to create a texture as it dried, and the other was a texture grid that we used rubbing plates and crayons to produce.
While the artwork came out pretty cool, and the kids liked the activity a lot, I wanted to make something a little more meaningful. So I spoke with my cooperating teacher, and together we came up with the idea of mosaics. We talked as a class about what a mosaic actually is - a big picture made up of tiny shapes, sort of like a puzzle!We had the kids practice on a small scale at first, and then eventually they moved to a large scale mosaic that took up about a third of the wall in the hallway outside of the art room.
The students cut up their texture artwork into small squares (fine motor skills!), and then glued them onto the large scale mosaic (gross motor skills!). This project really fostered a sense of community and collaboration, as the entire kindergarten got the opportunity to work on it at one point or another.
I have to say I am super proud of my students, they really knocked this one out of the ball park!
2nd Grade Leo Lionni inspired Mixed Media Collage!
So for World Read Aloud Day this year, I decided to base a mixed media project off of one of my favorite children’s books, Leo Lionni’s Swimmy. It’s a great book with amazing art that is a wonderful way to introduce mixed media printmaking techniques to kids.
I started out by reading my 2nd graders the book, and then had them talk about what they saw in the images. We talked about warm and cool colors, mixed media, printmaking, and painting. Then we got to the fun part, making our OWN “Swimmy” inspired underwater scenes using the very same techniques we spoke about in our discussion.
I can’t even tell you how excited they were (and me too hehehe).
We started out by painting our backgrounds. We used tempera cakes, and decided that we would stick with cool colors for the water. Once the backgrounds were painted, the students were given baskets with all kinds of collage materials: tissue paper, sandpaper, newspaper, and shiny paper in order to create an ocean floor and a large sea creature. I had a few special needs students in this class, so after consulting their classsroom teacher on appropriate modifications, I created an image bank for them with various ocean plant and animal life for them to choose from.
Once their collage was done we talked about printing. They were to use printmaking techniques to add in details like bubbles or small ocean animals like Swimmy. Overall this project took about four classes.
What was wonderful about this project is that technical skill wasn’t really as important as imagination and how you used the materials. Because of that, every child had the opportunity to not only succeed, but really enjoy themselves. This was a minimal stress and maximum fun project (as most mixed media projects are!).
