2nd Grade George Rodrigue Inspired Cat and Dog Paintings

     Are you a cat person or a dog person??  Our second graders just answered this question in these paintings inspired by George Rodrigue and his Blue Dog paintings.  Can you believe that there are NO pencil lines in these artworks??  I challenged the second graders to create "readable" paintings without the use of pencils or erasers.  They were skeptical at first, but as they continued working and trying, it was so fun to see the kids be surprised and impressed with themselves!

    The trick to the success of these paintings is to have the students paint their cats or dogs on 12" x 18" paper, cut them out, and then glue them onto 17" x 23" paper.  This helps the students to place their cat or dog where they want it, as opposed to where they kind of just end up.

   To finish the artworks, the students chose 18" x 24" construction paper to go with their paintings, and then created patterns with construction paper in the margins.