Dream beneath a desert sky

A two-fer Wednesday. These are some Joshua Tree-esque watercolor paintings the 6th graders made. They had to blend the colors together to make the sunset sky and the trees in the foreground were made by laying down a line of india ink and blowing on it with a straw. It makes a very cool effect.

Robot Parade

These robots were created by the first-graders. We talked about organic and geometric shapes, and the students drew robots using only geometric shapes. Some very cute robots were the result.

Don't ask me about the dollar sign on the first couple of pictures. You know how first-graders are. If one kid does something, they all have to do it.

My Classroom Door

Total Abstraction

A quickie. Some Wassily Kandinsky inspired pieces 6th grade did.

See how they run

I wanted to post some pictures of the kindergarteners working on their latest project, and of course my first picture inexplicably flips and I don't know how to fix it. Aarrgh! Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I read the book "Mouse Paint" to the kindergarten classes, and we talked about mixing colors to make new colors.

(On a side note, sometimes this blogger site can be so IRRITATING! It just won't let me do what I want to do.) After reading the story the students then mixed primary colors (red, yellow, and blue) to make secondary colors (green, purple, and orange). When the paint dried, they cut out the different colors and made their own mice.

Every color and every hue is represented by me and you.

These are Kaleidoscope Designs, or you could call them mandalas, that 6th graders finished today. We discussed radial symmetry, and they made a simple design and repeated it eight times around a circle.

They colored the designs with colored pencils, and were encouraged to try "shading" some of the shapes, which give them almost a stained-glass window quality. I think this is the first time they've been asked to shade something, and they did a good job.

These were made by Thearion, Hannah, Taylor, Jose, Kobe, and Chloe.

Stencil Prints

Sorry I have no clever title for this post. I just didn't have the energy. These are some prints that my smaller middle school classes made.












                                                                  

We took all the leftover printing blocks from our printing lesson a couple of months ago and printed over a stencil of a large shape. When the ink dried, the stencil was removed.

They then drew inside the empty space with white charcoal pencil. It's not a hard process, but it produces some interesting results with the overlapping images.                   

These were created by Justin, Leopold, Tiara, Erica, and Kevin.

Very Cool

In case you can't read it, this says "The dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, and the dry stone no sound of water." This was made by Victoria, who is a frequent "contributor" on this page. She finished her project early, and did this while others were finishing. She didn't write the text, but made a beautiful image inspired by it.

The Day of the Dead

These happy looking faces are the result of our 4th grade Dia de los Muertos project. We discussed Dia de los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead, and its significance in Latin American countries. We also looked at some examples of Mexican tin art. I even had a few students who observe it as a holiday.

The kids embossed an outline of a skull onto pieces of heavy duty aluminum foil, and then decorated the skulls and the negative space around them.

 

After they had finished working the metal, I hot glued the skulls to frames and they decorated the frames with the same designs they had used on the metal.

Scary, huh?

Here fishy, fishy, fishy, fishy...

Here are some pictures of the kindergartners holding up their completed crayon resist fish

They drew and colored their fish with crayons, and then I painted over them with blue watercolor paint. The kids wanted to paint their fish themselves, but we just didn't have the time to do it.

They did a great job.

Mural Update

Just thought I'd share a quick progress report on the cafeteria mural. We got a lot of good work done yesterday, and I think it's starting to shape up pretty well. There's still a lot of work to be done, and I'm afraid touch-up is going to be about half the work done on this. It's not easy to paint on a bumpy surface.

The House on Haunted Hill

This was a Halloween project that 5th grade did. Pretty self-explanatory, I think. The kids made stencils of broken-down, creaky houses, and then they sponged first purple then blue paint over the stencil. When they removed the houses, the spooky shadow was left. I added the moon.

If anyone knows how to keep these images from flipping like this, please tell me.

Word to your mother

Gracie

This was a fun project for 6th grade. We talked about an artistic collaboration between the artist Norman Bluhm and the poet Frank O'Hara (click the link for some examples). We also looked at artists who use words in their art like Robert Indiana.

 Mattie

 I then gave them a list of lines of poetry and asked them to choose one line and draw a picture inspired by it. They were free to interpret it however they chose, but my only requirement was that the words had to be part of the picture.

Tori

Some of them tried to be a little too literal with their interpretations, but they also made some beautiful images, as you can see here.

 

Jose

   Sorry this one flipped. I can't figure out how to re-orientate it.  

 Chloe
This one, too.                                                               

From now on, I'll connect the doys my own way

This is always a fun project. We talked about the artist Roy Lichtenstein and his contribution to Pop Art. We looked at the paintings he did based on panels from old romance and war comics, and talked about taking images out of the context of "low" or "commercial" art and remaking them as as "high" or "fine" art.


Since I'm a huge geek, I have a bunch of old comic books laying around. The kids picked one panel out of a comic and drew it on a large piece of paper. When they colored it, they colored some parts solid, and colored in other areas with big dots, which was supposed to be an exaggeration of the old comic printing process.

They turned out really good. I just realized that all of the pictures I chose to put up are close-ups of faces. It wasn't intentional, but I think, for some reason, that image translates really well for this project. These were created by Hannah, Isaac, Evan, Yady, and Asong. (Click on the title to read some information about Roy Lichtenstein.)