Thursday, February 2, 2012

Fish of Different "Scales" Based on Jason deCaires Taylor


     Suffield first graders created these awesome underwater scenes during my last six week session there.  We started by looking at the fascinating underwater sculptures of Jason deCaires Taylor.  Although it would have been interesting to try to make underwater sculptures, we instead decided to stick with fish!  We talked about the concept of scale (size in artworks) and the way big objects in artworks appear to be close to us and smaller objects appear to be further away.

     The students drew 3 fish on 6" x 9" drawing paper by looking at lots of photos of different kinds of fish.  We then traced the drawings with Sharpies, and then I enlarged and reduced each drawing on the copier after class (so each student ended up with 9 fish: 3 small sized, 3 medium sized, and 3 larger fish).  The students colored their fish with markers, and we created the underwater backgrounds by drawing plant-life with oil pastels and then painting with lots of different cool-colored paints.  We also used some glitter glue in the backgrounds, but it didn't show up very well in the photographs!  Each student also got to use a few 3D Dots to make some fish appear to "pop" out!







No comments: