Silberzweig Portraits

I first learned of Sandra Silberzweig at a professional development day with my school system’s art teachers. And of course, as new things tend to do, after learning about her I started seeing her stuff everywhere. 

I love her art and all the colors and patterns in it. The kids love it too and other than how colorful it is, they love the funky, stylized aspect of her faces. 

One of my favorites is the cat eating a fish:

And of course the Dia de Los Muertos inspired calavera:

So my first and third graders have been working on their own versions and I thought I would share some of their work in progress:

I will be sure to share their finished pieces too! 

Indian Corn

I’m loving all of these Indian Corn projects I’ve seen on the art blogs and Pinterest.  I decided to try my own and we will be starting them next week. I made a step by step to show my kids! 😊

Happy Painting! 🎨🖌

Rainbow Tweet!

Kinders are going to be learning colors and color order next week. I saw a picture on Pinterest for this idea but the link doesn’t lead to a lesson or the picture for it – at least not anymore. Shout out to the creator! 

I think this is a great way to introduce some painting skills to those babies who haven’t ever held a paintbrush and work on rainbow order/color wheel at the same time. I’ll post results next week! 😎

Here are a few results! I love them. 😍

Caught Up in Color!

Pretty excited about this project even though it’s been around for awhile. I’ve never attempted it with any grade and I’m not sure why. Probably just not enough hours in the day or classes in the week. But this year I’m giving it a shot with first grade. It’s a fun take on what can be a Halloween project (or not) and uses lines, color, and some 3D effects with the spider. 

I’m posting my step by step pics to use when I’m going through it with my students. I’ll add more with the spider later. We used black crayons to draw the webs and tempera cakes to paint. 

Here are a few finished webs with spiders! I love how colorful they are. The kids did a great job taking their time painting. 

A glimpse of the action

Here’s a few shots of some of our first projects. Reviewing elements with fourth and fifth, learning more about the color wheel and practicing zentangles with third, and using warm and cool colors, shapes, and lines with second. The year is off to great start! 

Color Wheel Turtles

First graders are finishing up their color wheel turtles this week and they are so cute!!! 

   
    
   

Warm and Cool Skies

This was an interesting concept to teach my 2nd graders. We looked at the color wheel. We looked at lots of examples of art that used warm or cool colors. We practiced separating the markers into different piles. We discussed why peach and pink are warm colors. We worked REALLY hard. 

This project took us three or four weeks and required lots of patience but I think at the end of it they learned to really appreciate the effort because of how great the outcome. #lifelessons

   
    
    
    
    
   

Picasso, Primativism, Paint, and Pastels

I saw this project on A Glimmer of Light and decided it would be a fun project to do with my 5th graders. They get so caught up in making things realistic and perfect, this project encourages them to do just the opposite and let the funky chicken out. And while we were working on these, I remembered another chicken project I have done with Kindergarten and thought it would be a great time to review color-mixing with them and then hang the Kinders’ and the 5th grader’s work together!

First the 5th grade work:

Are these not hilarious?! I love them and the kids loved them too.

Here are some kinder-chickens.

  
And here is the final bulletin board with bothe grade’s artwork!

Continual Line Drawing

I am so loving these continual line drawings of owls that my 3rd graders are working on. It is so hard for some of them to let go of perfection. They look at me like I am absolutely nuts when I tell them they can’t pick up their marker until they are completely finished with the drawing. Luckily, there is a great, short video on the original site for this project. It can be found here: megduerksen.com

The drawing goes quickly but the coloring will take awhile. This also seems to be a great way to squeeze every last drop of ink out of the markers for the year. 🙂 

   
         

  

   
      

Snowmen at Play

This is a fun project I came across on Artsonia by Blue Mountain Elementary students. I love the different perspective and that each picture can still be individualized.
I’ve shared pictures of the step by step process so far. We will share more when they are complete!