Wocket in My Pocket

There's a Wocket in My Pocket! What??? Anyone who has every read Dr. Suess knows he had an incredible imagination! His book, There's a Wocket in My Pocket illustrates that imagination perfectly. In the book, a young boy lives in a house with all kinds of characters-big, small, friendly and scary. While first graders read the story we noticed that Dr. Suess' characters did share some characteristics. They were furry, had crazy hair, and long necks. Their bodies came in all shapes and sizes. After reading the story students drew their own crazy character. They painted them with tempera paint and then outlined them with black so we could see all the awesome details. The backgrounds were made using crayons and textured rubbing plates. The final touch was to give a name to their character.

The inspiration for this project was found at TeachKidsArt.

One Fish, Two Fish

March 2 is Theodore Geisel Suess, aka Dr. Suess', birthday! To celebrate second grade listened to the story One Fish, Two Fish. While looking at the illustrations students noticed that he used black outlines in his illustrations and some of his fish swam like regular fish, while some were standing. His fish were also a variety of colors. They began their project by drawing the fish as big as possible on their paper with black crayon, including details. Bright tempera paint colors were used to paint the fish. When it dried, they outlined their crayon lines with black craypas and cut out their fish. Their backgrounds were made my cutting a variety of lines from red construction paper. The red and white pattern is a reflection of Dr. Suess' most famous book, The Cat in the Hat. The results were a beautiful and a great tribute to Dr. Suess.

The idea for the this project was found at Deep Space Sparkle.

100 Hearts!

The 100th day of school and Valentine's Day are the same day this year! In honor of these two great days coinciding first and second graders tried drawing 100 hearts.  I taught them a heart drawing trick-"draw a 3 and then a V" (see below).  We talked about strategies of fitting all of those hearts on one paper-overlapping, changing size, and drawing partial hearts to activate the edges of the paper. After students drew the hearts they had a choice of coloring solid colors or using the texture rubbing plates we have in the art room to add interest.

100 Day Art!

 

Face of an Owl

 

Scuba Diver Mask

 

Key to a Door

 

Tomorrow, February 14, 2012, is the 100th day of school at Phippsburg Elementary! To celebrate, third graders were challenged to use their imaginations to use the number 100 in a piece of art. They traced the numbers, cut them out and got creative! 

 Turbo Truck

 Zombie Girl and Jewelry Store Thief

 Monster Truck

Hunter

Rosy Hearts

 

Pablo Picasso had many different art styles during his career.  Art historians have given names to these periods of art in his life.  Fourth grade has been studying Picasso's Blue Period and Rose Period.  The Rose Period was after Mr. Picasso's Blue Period.  During his Blue Period he was depressed, poor and unsettled. Then, as he became successful his attitude became more positive and he began using brighter colors and depicting happier images.  And, he fell in love! As you can see from the hearts, this lesson is inspired by Mr. Picasso's Rose Period. Students were given red, magenta, white and black paint and asked to create a large heart painted in tints and shades of red. I believe this hearts would cheer anyone's day!

This lesson was completely swiped from the awesome art teacher blog Painted Paper.

Cubist Portraits

 Fifth graders studied Pablo Picasso's Cubist portraits.  To create his portraits, Mr. Picasso took two different views of a face and combined them into one image.  Fifth graders created three portrait collages by combining a front view of a face and a profile.  They also learned about complimentary colors, which are across from each other on the color wheel.  Each pair of complimentary colors has one primary and one secondary color.  Facial features we added using scraps of paper and details were done with black tempera paint. The results were colorful and imaginative!

Winter Wonderland

I wish the world outside the windows of PES looked like this!  The rain is turning the pretty white snow into grayish-brown slush!  It's a good thing the second graders created these beautiful winter landscape!
Students learned the different "tricks" artists use to create depth in their artwork.  These tricks help landscapes look like you can walk right into them.  When they created their landscape there were asked to make colors bright to dark by mixing shades of gray, use overlapping and to make changes in size to show depth.  Although most of their work was made with tempera paint, craypas (oil pastels) were used for adding pops of color and detail.