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! 

Tinga Tinga Tales

So the last two or three weeks of school were really REALLY busy. Testing, awards days, field trips, etc. Some days we would have classes and some days we would not. This was one of my last projects I did with some of my first grade classes. It’s a new project and they turned out so pretty. Not even half the kids finished in the two weeks we worked on them so I would say this needs a good three classes to get completely finished.

The first class, we used We Give Books to read Tinga Tinga Tales. If you don’t know about this website, it’s awesome. Free books, online, and the organization donates real books to others. Use it!
Then we we went back and looked at all the bright illustrations, especially focusing on the chicken and her beautifully patterned feathers.
We used black paper and white crayons to draw our chickens and the farm in the background. Then we used oil pastel to color it all in and learned about layering the oil pastels and creating the patterns. They turned out so bright and pretty and each one was different. I’m sad I didn’t get to hang these up and share them with the rest of the school. I must remember to do them before the very end next year! 😄

Chinese Dragons

We are a little late for the Chinese New Year but we discussed the tradition anyway and the kids are really enjoying the project. We are reviewing some of the basic art elements of line, shape, pattern, and color.

Visual Whistling!

This is another lesson that I’ve posted about before but my students just keep out-doing themselves! I love these and so does the music teacher! 🙂

Pattern Owls

Second grade’s second artist to discuss is Gustav Klimt. They love all of the busy patterns (or as they say, “patterins”???) and designs and colors… As do I. 🙂 so we drew the outline of an owl in sharpie on a 9×12 paper and added the designs with crayons. The second class, we cut our owls out and then painted them with watercolors.
They will look beautiful on my “Hoo” loves fall art board!

Folk Art Farm Quilt

First grade has been working on some farm pictures and they turned out beautifully! We drew the horizon line and then added the barn. Then we drew the “quilt”, remembering not to get carried away and draw TOO many lines or we would be coloring the squares forever. Then we colored everything with markers except the sky (we used a crayon for that.) Last, we used a black marker to add the lines and patterns to represent the crops. Fantastic job, kiddos!

Whistle a visual tune

I found this project on smART Class’ blog and I love all the cool projects that she comes up with that mixes photography, collage, and technology. She is SO smART!
The kids enjoyed this so much and they received many compliments from teachers and students. I love to see them be proud of what they’ve created.

We started out by using Photobooth on the Macs to take pictures of them whistling. They had to lighten it in iPhoto and then printed and cut it out. We glued it to a 12×18 white paper. The next class, I had set up each table with a different medium – watercolors, color pencils, crayons, oil pastels, markers, and metallic crayons. They spent that class moving around the room and adding different lines with different materials. The third and final class, we used sharpies to add lots of patterns, lines, and shapes to the leftover empty areas.

Matryoshka Dolls

This lesson was a featured article on Deep Space Sparkle today. Like Patty says, this will be a great lesson in line and pattern. Every kid I’ve ever seen with the Matryoshka dolls love them so I really think the kids will enjoy this project. I’ll update with photos when we come back after the new year. : )

Finally got around to making these! They turned out so well and the kids seemed to enjoy making them. I also employed one of my new assesent techniques – “two stars and a wish.” when the students were finished with their artwork, I had them turn it over and write two things they liked about their piece and one thing they would like to improve.
Here are some of mine!

All tangled up…

So, I have been browsing some blogs and art websites and something that keeps coming up is something called Zentangles or Zendoodles. They are all intricate and detailed and delicate and I really really like them! So I googled “zentangle” and found a website with an explanation and examples. I’m definitely going to be trying these out, I’m just not sure with which grade to start. But what a great lesson in line and repetition! I’ll share soon!
ZENTANGLES!!!