Tints and Shades

3rd graders learned to create tints and shades.  To make a tint, you have to add white paint to a color to make it lighter.  To make a shade, you have to add black paint to a color to make it darker.

 

 

 

We made beautiful paintings of a night sky.  Students worked hard on this because they had to mix their own tints and shades for the paintings.

Then we used construction paper to add a snowy winter landscape to the bottom of each painting.

Snip snip.

 

Great work!

 

Finished product.

Mask Making

2nd grade has finished a great mask collage project!  For this activity, we focused on using neutral colors.

 

 

We also talked a lot about masks from different cultures.  These examples gave us tons of ideas for our own artworks!

 

 

We started by sketching out our ideas.

 

 

Then we cut out a large shape for the face.

And added LOTS of interesting shapes and details.

Creative 2nd graders.

Some students even made parts of the masks 3-dimensional.

We can do some cool stuff with paper!

Ta-dah!

Whoa!  Look at these neutral colored creatures!!!!

Just kidding!  They are only 2nd graders :)



Op Art: Fooling Your Eyes!

4th grade has been looking closely at optical illusions in art class.  They are so much fun!  At first, you see one thing.... but then you see something else!

 

 

 

 

After a lot of Op Art discussion, students made Op Art of their own.  Take a look!

 

We started by carefully drawing a tunnel illusion.  By carefully adding shadows and highlights with pencil, the pieces of our tunnels appear to be 3-dimensionsal!

It was a lot of work, but when we finished, they looked AWESOME!
 

 

Then Ms. May took some silly pictures of each student sitting in a chair...

 

 

but after we cut the pictures out....

we look like we are falling down the tunnel!

Ahhhhh!!!!

Don't worry!  It's just an optical illusion :)



Overlapping with Hearts

 

Kinders learned about overlapping during this lovely watercolor project.

 



First students cut a shape out of paper.  Many students chose hearts for Valentine's Day!  We used our shape as a template for tracing.



Tracing can be tricky for Kindergarten fingers, but soon, we filled our page with shapes.  Can you see places where the shapes overlap?

 

We painted our shapes with watercolor paint.

I was proud of Kindergarten's painting skills.  We had to paint gently with this type of paint, and every student was very careful.

Hard at work!

Where the shapes overlap, we painted another color. 

Artist in action!

We were proud of our work.



Why is Blue Dog Blue?

 

1st graders love painting!  We got some more color mixing practice with this project, based on the book Why Is Blue Dog Blue?

First we read the book Why Is Blue Dog Blue?, by George Rodrigue.  It is a fun story about how artists use color to express themselves.

 

After carefully studying the pictures in the book, we drew our own dogs.  We painted them using only primary colors (red, yellow, and blue).

Little fingers got fine motor practice as we painted carefully around tricky shapes in our pictures.



Yellow and red make an orange sun!

Blue and yellow make green grass.

Finally, we outlined our dogs in black paint.  More fine motor practice... wow!  We are growing up to be great artists!

Finished product.

Finished product.

Finished product.

Finished product.

Finished product.

Finished product.

Finished product.

Creating the Illusion of Space.

 

5th graders have been working with the art element of space.  They are using a very tricky technique called one point linear perspective to create the illusion of depth on a 2-dimensional paper.  This is how it works:

 

Students practiced this technique in their linear perspective sketch books.

Once we were comfortable with this new skill, we used it in a "How I Got to School Today" art project. Students brainstormed a funny, creative idea about how they got to school.  Some of the shapes in the sketches use linear perspective.



After a lot of brainstorming, students decided on ideas to enlarge on white drawing paper.  We used sharpies, colored pencils, and crayons to finish the artworks.

Finished product.

Finished product.

Finished product.

Finished product.

Finished product.

Towards the end of the unit, students participated in a group critique activity.  Students moved about the room and left helpful comments about eachother's art.  Every student recieved a lot of compliments, and also some ideas about how to make their art even better.  Critiques make us better artists!!