Sunburst Paintings

My fifth graders started these sunburst paintings today.  They were fully engaged and enjoying the freedom to experiment with color mixing.  I can’t wait to see their finished products!  Thanks to  Small for Big for such a great idea!

Off with their heads!!!

I love these playing card self portraits so much! You can find examples of these all over the Internet on the art Ed blogs. They are always great and I decided to try my hand at them with my 5th graders. I believe I attempted this with some older kids many years ago when I taught middle school grades but these are turning out much better than I remember.  🙂

We used photo booth on the Mac to take their pictures – printed out two copies (unless they wanted to be a joker) and then they drew their own designs. I put up examples of playing cards to help them but they could do their own thing if they wanted. 

   
    
   

   
 

Here are some of the finished pieces!

   
    
    
   

Sometimes you have to put it out to pasture…

My fifth graders have been working on these cow paintings for a few weeks now. We discussed foreshortening and looked at lots of examples before we started our sketches. 

When they finished their sketches, I let them choose a color for their background but gave them black and white or analogous colors to add to the main color to give the pictures some depth.  

I gave them a fairly limited palette with only brown, black, white, and the primary colors to paint their cows and they did a nice job mixing to get the other colors they wanted. 

Some of these are just hilarious because of the expressions on the faces but I love all of them. The drawing goal was to show depth with foreshortening and the painting goal was to show texture with painting technique and more depth with highlights and shadows. 

I’ll be adding more photos of finished cows soon! 

   
    
    
    
   

Happy New Year!

Wow, it’s been a long time and I feel terrible about that.  I’ve gotten quite a few new followers since my last post and y’all are probably wondering why in the world you bothered.  Well, the holidays were rather busy – busier than normal – and I got a new phone and haven’t had access to my old photos that I took of my holiday art and boards.  I think I did share some on Instagram before I got my new phone so if you are an Insta-user, check out tinyartroom there.

So, right before our Winter break, I started all my classes on their Art to Remember projects.  A few grades finished and a few are finishing this week.  All of the projects are turning out great and I have two new Art to Remember projects that I’m trying out this year.

Kindergarten was one of the classes that finished before the break so I was looking around on Pinterest and my favorite art blogs (see the blogroll to the right) to see what I could find for them that would ease us back into the swing of things.  For some of these kids (and me) I feel like it’s a second First Day of school so we need to tiptoe back into it.

I found this awesome project over at this cute little French art blog called Le Petites Têtes de L’Art which Google translated to “Small Heads of Art” so… let’s just stick to stumbling over the French pronunciation.  Anyway – the kids loved making this so much.  At the end of class, I asked them what they liked so much about it.  They all said some version of  “I liked the scribbling” and “I like cutting the paper.” So, basically they liked being given a goal but allowed to go about achieving it how they wanted.  Ahhhh… choice based art.  I promised them we would do more of this.  🙂

For now, check out the results of today’s work:

   
   
   
    
   
 

Jasper Johns Abstract Expressionist Maps

Fifth graders are studying Jasper Johns again this year but we are using larger paper for our maps. The kids really enjoyed the freedom of his style of painting and getting to paint like him. I’ll share more as we finish!

Up, Up, and Away!

My fifth graders started on their NC art project this week. We are creating in honor of the annual Statesville Hot Air Balloon Festival. We looked at tons of pictures of hot air balloons, paintings of hot air balloons, and even a video of a mass launch at the Statesville festival.
I wanted to give them more choice in their artwork and so I left up lots of the pictures we looked at and they are using those and their own ideas to create their own individual pictures.
Here’s a few from the first day of sketching…

Day one of choosing their own materials. They chose from crayons, markers, color pencils, color sticks, oil pastels, and paint.

Written Self Assessment

This post will probably be as boring as it sounds but it’s about something that I am required to do now and I would love some feedback.
My fifth graders were working on their daydreaming self portraits and in the middle of the project, I had them stop and reflect on how it was going so far. I think this really helped some of them. The questions I asked were:
1. Are you following the objectives for this project: using real and imaginary sources for inspiration?
2. What is your opinion of your project so far? Are you happy with it? Not liking it?
3. What will you do differently to fix anything you are not happy with?

These are a few of the results that I thought gave good answers and were able to complete their projects and meet all of the objectives.

I would love to hear feedback and what you do in your classroom on all grade levels.
Thanks!

Let’s put it in perspective…

Check out these fab one point perspective pics my 5th graders are working on. Each 5th grade is doing it a little differently as far as placement of the horizon line and vanishing point go, so once I get all the pictures posted there will be several variations.

Crayola Color Sticks

Holy Color Sticks, Batman! 5th graders made these!
I bought a (fairly) new product by Crayola earlier this year called Color Sticks. I thought this would be a good time to pull them out and let the kids try them. They are like color pencils except without that pesky wood around the color that you have to sharpen every two minutes. They look great on color construction paper which is how we used them.
The first class was spent drawing the pumpkins and then tracing our pencil lines with glue. We discussed the fact that they are in fifth grade now and should know how to manipulate the glue with ease. Amazingly, they all seemed to take that to heart and did a great job with drawing with glue.
The next class was spent coloring and they did a great job. The color sticks are bright and blend nicely. Check out where they are so far.

Sun Stone Prints

Fifth graders are also making the Aztec sun stones but they are using printmaking as their medium.

We started by painting the background with orange, yellow, and gold paint. They created foam printing plates and were totally impressed with the process. They only made the face for their prints and then used other stamps I’ve created to add to them. They are turning out beautifully!