Thursday, March 29, 2012

1st Grade Delicious Desserts with Waybe Thiebaud

Sara P., 1-1

     We've been working on these yummy-looking dessert artworks in 1st grade at Suffield.  We learned about Wayne Thiebaud and enjoyed looking at his thick, frosting-esque paint application.  I've done variations on this lesson over the years, and I am really happy with these simple versions! 

     We drew cake plates, and then drew desserts (I have lots of photographs of desserts to help) sitting on top of them.  We used rulers to draw the borders and drew simple AB patterns in them.  We colored the desserts and the borders with watercolor crayons and then added water. We then used tempera Biggie Cakes to paint the backgrounds and that was about it!

Bailey E., 1-1

Matthew S., 1-1

Matthew G., 1-1

Chloe V., 1-1

Alexa B., 1-1

Megan S., 1-1

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Frank Stella Paper Sculptures

Evan R., 4-2

     The fourth graders just completed one of my favorite lessons because I actually wrote it during my student teaching way way back in 2004!  Speaking of student teaching, you should definitely check out my good friend Mrs. Susa's (she was my cooperating teacher for student teaching!!!) new blog from Lake Elementary!!

     Anyway, we made these awesome paper sculptures at Suffield after learning about the abstract sculptures of Frank Stella.  We talked about abstract art and how it can be "about" something even though there may not be recognizable pictures in it.  We looked at his sculpture Jarama II  and played The Guessing Game over at NGA Kids.  The kids really liked this neat web site!

     To make the sculptures, each student started with two 9" x 12" pieces of white tag board.  We drew two symmetrical shapes with negative space in the center on one piece, and then two asymmetrical shapes with negative space on the other piece.  The students carefully cut the shapes out and drew patterns on the fronts and backs of them.  We colored with markers and then glued them together with twists and bends to make sculptures.  If you try this lesson, be sure to tell the students to hold the areas they are gluing together for a loooooong time or else they pop apart as you try to move on with your next piece! 



Serenity S., 4-2

Eva H., 4-2



Brenna C., 4-1
Caleb F., 4-1




Thursday, March 1, 2012

2nd Grade Special Someone's from Brimfield


     We just finished these portraits of special people during my last week at Brimfield.  We had talked about some of the different reasons artists create portraits of other people.  Artists often make portraits of people they care about, so the second graders worked hard to create these portraits dedicated to "someone special" in their lives.
     We learned about basic facial proportioning and tried to draw these important people as realistically as possible.  In the backgrounds, the students drew pictures of things their special person likes or cares about.  We completed the artworks with titles that could tell viewers who the special person is!
     We outlined the pencil drawings with Sharpies, and then painted with tempera paint and tempera Biggie Cakes.  Because many of the background drawings were really small, we colored those with crayons or colored pencils instead of paint.