The Silent Crtique

This is an idea I heard about from a video by Timothy Bogatz at the theartofed.com .  (I had to tweak the idea a little due to the size of my classroom and age of my students.  

Over the last two weeks I had on display 6 - 7 pieces of artwork created by students from the 3rd - 6th grade.  The names of the artists were covered by a sticky note with a number on it.  As the classes came in  the students were handed a small piece of paper and asked to write a compliment or two about one of the works on display.  Since they did not know who created the piece they were not influenced by who the artist was and were able to really concentrate on what they liked about the work.  The compliments got taped onto the backs of the projects before I filed the artwork into the students portfolios.  By the end of the week all the students had compliments taped to the back of their Cubism Portraits.

 

Cubism is an early-20th-century art movement that was pioneered by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso.  In Cubist artwork, objects are broken up and reassembled in an abstract form many times made up of geometric shapes.  Instead of showing objects from one viewpoint, the artist shows the subject from a several points of view at once.  Our students created cubism portraits using construction paper, glue sticks, markers, pastels, crayons, color pencils and watercolors.

 

In The Style of Rufino Tamayo

Rufino Arellanes Tamayo was born in Oaxaca, Mexico in 1899. He went to art school but he did not enjoy what they taught there so he began to study art on his own. He moved to New York City and there he saw other artists’ work that began to influence his own. During his lifetime he moved back and forth between New York, Paris and Mexico, creating a unique style of art that blended the many artistic styles he saw. He often used vibrant colors and textured surfaces to show his subjects in abstract ways. The Kindergarten & First Graders made watermelon still life paintings in the style of Rufino Tamayo.

PAINTING LANDSCAPES

We have just finished our unit on Landscapes in Art.  A landscape is a painting of outside.  There is usually a horizon line where the sky meets the land.  We painted the same landscape four times during different seasons just like Monet!  We also created several other landscape projects.  Here is a short video so that you can see our young artists in action.

https://youtu.be/ScRMGa6-beY?list=PLsoFE8aVnBT1t4wDHeQk0Fj-saWnHx9Z_

Painting a Still Life

 A composition is the way an artist arranges the lines and shapes in his artwork. These lines and shapes form pictures or designs.   An artist can arrange his compositions to show portraits, landscapes and still life pictures. A still life is a work of art that shows a group of objects placed together that are not alive. The objects in the still life form the subject. The subject of a painting fills the positive space.  The rest of the picture is the background. This forms the negative space.

This year the 4th - 6th graders created their own still life paintings.  First they chose the objects that they wanted and set them up to be photographed.  Using the photographs, each student created a drawing that later became a water color of his or her still life.  When they were done painting, each student chose a partner to compare and contrast their still life with.  In their journals they wrote about these comparisons and reflected upon their own work as well.

Here is a link to a short video of these young artists at work.   https://youtu.be/8nAgktJtdR4
Enjoy the show!

  

Chanukah Crafts

Here is a link to our special Chanukah Crafts video.  Each grade did a different project and we all had such a great time.

https://youtu.be/209vs0govN8?list=PLsoFE8aVnBT1t4wDHeQk0Fj-saWnHx9Z_

Stain Glass Windows

We have just finished our unit on Stain Glass Windows.   

Stained Glass is a picture that is on a window. Most stain glass designs are outlined with lead. The windows are transparent which means that the light can shine through it. When light shines through the windows you can easily see the colors and shapes.

We made our own stain glass windows using plastic sheets, sharpies and black puffy paint.

Here is a very short video so that you can watch your children in action

https://youtu.be/_BebSK4EGVE?list=PLsoFE8aVnBT1t4wDHeQk0Fj-saWnHx9Z_