Kindergarten - Week 7

Color Families

In Kindergarten this week, we learned that each color belongs to a color family. For instance, there are many different greens that are all related to each other in the green family. There is forest green, lime green, sea foam green, spring green, olive green, blue-green, emerald green, leaf green, grass green, and toxic waste green! Just to name a few! All of them are exciting and different, but still part of the same family.

After playing some color related games, each student chose a favorite color and built a color family on one side of his/her paper; then he/she drew a picture of his/her own family on the other side of the paper.

Kindergarten - Week 6

This week we talked about what a Landscape is! Then the students used the pastels (chalk) to create super colorful landscapes of their own.

This is the easiest way to get young students to color all of the sky to the ground and is a precursor to the first grade horizon line lesson.
Ask the students to draw 3 'bumpy' lines all the way across the paper. Help them decide where the sky should be and what the other areas of the picture could be. Options include mountains, hills, rivers, roads, lake, ocean, and 'grass'. Encourage a variety of color choices or you will end up with blue sky, brown mountain, and green grass.

To parents, if you find this artwork truly beautiful, but incredibly messy, do not despair. Instead, spray it with some aerosol hairspray! The hairspray acts like a glue and will 'fix' the chalk onto the paper, making it MUCH less messy.

Thank you, Mrs. Rigamoto's class!

I came back from lunch on Thursday to find that my classroom door had been 'heart attacked' by Mrs. Rigamoto's a.m. kindergarten class. What a wonderful surprise! It left me with a big grin for the rest of the day! Thank you, boys and girls!

Kindergarten - Week 5

TEXTURES! This is the new art word for the kindergarten students. Texture means how something feels when you touch it. We played texture guessing games, then used texture rubbing plates record textures on paper. For family follow up, give your child a blank paper and a crayon and go on a texture hunt through the house, 'recording' the textures found by rubbing them onto the paper.

Watercolor Sampler

In preparation for our Op art paintings, the fourth grade classes worked through a watercolor sampler, trying out 11 of the most common tips, tricks, and techniques they would need to know in order to be successful. This would be a great time to gift watercolor paints and paper to your budding artist!

4th grade - Op Art project

Now that we have learned what Op art is, we are ready to make an Op art of our own!

This artwork involves so many steps that it will take us at least 2 weeks to complete it!

Each student used a practice paper to plan out two images of the same place showing some major change.  It may be a picture of a playground in the summer, and the same playground in the winter.  Or it could be a tree before and after it was split by lightning!  The goal is to have something in both images that can be recognized as the same thing.  We called this the HARDSCAPE.

Once the plans were complete, the students drew out both pictures on white paper.  We are currently in the process of painting them.  Ask your son/daughter how he/she is doing at keeping up with the class.  I encourage students who start to fall behind to come in at recess and work to catch up with the class.

I have a few students who have moved on to the next phase.  Once the paintings are dry, they are chopped into strips, then rearranged in an alternating pattern on a backing paper.  Once that is completed and dry, the artwork will be accordion folded and glued onto a final backing paper.

When completed, the finished piece should be hard to comprehend when looking at it straight on, but will have two artworks that can be seen separately when it is tilted back and forth.

Kindergarten - Week 4

This week the kindergarten students played with modelling clay. This was an open ended art assignment, again. They were encouraged to try everything from animals to alphabet letters. After one item was built, it was smashed to make the next thing the student could imagine.

The point of this assignment is to give the students time to work on fine motor skills. These are the skills that allow a person to hold a pencil and write, tie shoe laces, and to do other skills that require the fingers to work together on small and coordinated efforts. Every time a small child gets a hold on some clay or other malleable material (such as playdoh), he/she will spend a lot of effort trying to force the fingers to work together to make recognizable objects. This pays of in large dividends when the child finds he/she is able to then hold a pencil and force it to move in very precise ways to write letters.

Op Art

The term OP ART is a shortening of a style of art known as Optical Illusion Art.  The definition of Op Art (according to Art Lex) is;

A twentieth century art movement and style in which artists sought to create an impression of movement on the picture surface by means of optical illusion. It is derived from, and is also known as Optical Art and Perceptual Abstraction. 

 Op art falls into two main categories.  The first is ABSTRACT and the other is PERCEPTUAL.

ABSTRACT OP ART

Abstract means an image that does not look like a real world object or image.  For instance, it does not look like a house, a tree, or a person.  Instead, the image is comprised of shapes, lines, and colors.

Blue-Black

Victor Vasarely (French, born Hungary, 1908-1997) was an abstract Op artist.

Blue/Red

1983

Victor Vasarely

Intake

Bridget Riley (British, 1931-)

 

Cataract


 Bridget Riley

Perceptual Op Art

This refers to art that shows some impossibility in perception.  The most famous artist in this category is Maurits Cornelis Escher (Dutch, 1898-1972).

 

Relativity

This is only one of his many Op art works.  I would encourage you to explore the world of Escher by clicking on this link to  The Official M.C. Escher Web Site.  You can also find the link in one of the lists in the right column.

Notice that you can perceive (see) a seeming impossibility.  People going up and down stairs from different perspectives.  This would be impossible on earth due to the force of gravity.