The first project of the year is based on the work of James Rizzi. The students look at the work of James Rizzi, who was a painter based in NYC. He creates fun paintings of his beloved NYC with buildings in bright colors with different faces on them. The students create their own cities and add different kinds of faces to the buildings. We discuss showing space by overlapping. The students then add bright colors by using tempera paint.
The next project we do is based on the art of Lois Ehlert. The student watch a video about Lois Ehlert who is an author and illustrator. She talks about how she gets her ideas for her stories and shows how she makes some of her art. Most of her art is done by collage. The students then make painted paper to use in their own collage. The students use three colors - yellow, red and orange. They paint the paper first and then use tools to drag through the paint to make textures. They then use this paper to make a fall collage with leaves, pumpkins and gourds.
We then move onto learning about the art of Grandma Moses. Grandma Moses is a folk artist - meaning she never went to art school and she painted memories from everyday life. Her favorite to subject to paint was landscapes. We talk about using Space, which is an element of art, in our own landscape design. There are six ways to create Space in a picture - overlapping, placement, size, detail, color and value and perspective. For this project the students create a large barn in the foreground of the picture and either two or three smaller barns in the background to show distance. We talk about how objects in the foreground are larger and objects in the background are smaller.
The next project we do is a Dragon. The dragon's body is created by using folded card stock. The students make scales on the dragon and color it using Value - the lights and darks of a color. They use a different value in every section of the dragon's body. The last step is to make the head and tail - the students get to use model magic to design the head and tail.
The next project we do is based on the art of Lois Ehlert. The student watch a video about Lois Ehlert who is an author and illustrator. She talks about how she gets her ideas for her stories and shows how she makes some of her art. Most of her art is done by collage. The students then make painted paper to use in their own collage. The students use three colors - yellow, red and orange. They paint the paper first and then use tools to drag through the paint to make textures. They then use this paper to make a fall collage with leaves, pumpkins and gourds.
We then move onto learning about the art of Grandma Moses. Grandma Moses is a folk artist - meaning she never went to art school and she painted memories from everyday life. Her favorite to subject to paint was landscapes. We talk about using Space, which is an element of art, in our own landscape design. There are six ways to create Space in a picture - overlapping, placement, size, detail, color and value and perspective. For this project the students create a large barn in the foreground of the picture and either two or three smaller barns in the background to show distance. We talk about how objects in the foreground are larger and objects in the background are smaller.
The next project we do is a Dragon. The dragon's body is created by using folded card stock. The students make scales on the dragon and color it using Value - the lights and darks of a color. They use a different value in every section of the dragon's body. The last step is to make the head and tail - the students get to use model magic to design the head and tail.