Dashing Dali

I found this over at There’s A Dragon in my Art Room and she gives cred to Use Your Coloured Pencils. It’s easy and cute and the kids enjoyed looking at and trying to figure out Dali’s crazy artwork. UYCP used pipe cleaners. I didn’t have enough black pipe cleaners so we used black yarn.

This is mine but I’ll post pictures of theirs tomorrow!

I had two of my second grade classes do the Dali portraits and the other three classes did a cool picture of some Dali-esque birds, similar to his tall, skinny elephants. The kids love his crazy artwork and always squeal in delight? horror? when I show them some photographs of him. He is definitely an artist that kids enjoy!

Egyptian Pharoah Portraits

Fourth grade really enjoyed learning about the queens and pharoahs and all of the art of Ancient Egypt. We looked at tons of photos of monuments, hieroglyphics, sculptures, and sarcophagi. We took their photos using Photobooth on the Mac and then cut their heads and necks out and glued them to a black background. We drew the clothes and head-ware with pencil, first, then added color with oil pastels. They also wrote their names in hieroglyphics and added a frame of gold and silver. They all seemed pleased with their final products!

First Grade Gets The Blues…

And the happies! : ) The last couple of weeks, I have been discussing Picasso and his “periods” with the first graders. We compared and contrasted with paintings from each period and had some interesting discussions about how people used to dress and, it never failed, any time I said, “Picasso fell in love,” kids would fall out of their chairs, totally disgusted. Highly entertaining.

After we recovered from the discussions of feeling sad and then happy, we created our own Blue Period portraits and Rose Period portraits. These are some of the results!

Blue Man Group

Saw this post on Pinterest last night (I mean, really, what did we do before Pinterest???) and I can’t wait to do it with my kids! It’s from There’s A Dragon In My Art Room and it looks like lots of fun. It will also be a nice move from my recent discussion of Picasso’s Rose period that we had for our Valentine’s Day Rose Period Hearts Project.
I will for sure be posting these ASAP!

7th grade Face Cards

This project seemed like it took forever but I really like some of the outcomes!

8th Grade Word Portraits

I like doing this word portrait project with 8th graders because it allows them to draw something they are interested in (themselves) and it marks a special time in their lives. Some kids are self conscious about drawing their pictures so big – we do it on bulletin board paper that’s approximately 3′ x 2′ – but the school loves it when I put these on display and parents love them too.

I start by taking their pictures and then using the ActivBoard to blow them up so that they can trace just the basic lines of their bodies, head, and face. While they are waiting, I have them work on a list of at least 20 words to describe themselves and things they like. These are the words they will use to create their portraits. Once they all have their pictures traced, I give them sharpies and they go over all of the lines, using the words. From far away, it just looks like a basic line portrait. But close up, it shows their personality. : )