Colour Schemes

In both Grade 5 and Grade 6 I have recently decided to work on colour schemes.  In Grade 5 I only focused on complimentary colours and monochramatic colours.  For their project, I simply had them choose one of the schemes, and make an abstract shape drawing.  This project took most students two, 1-hour periods to finish.  I highly recommend this project for two reasons: 1) A great bulletin board display!, 2) No prep and even a great filler if you need a quick art project!.

Here are the results:

Complimentary Colours - Blue and Orange

Complimentary Colours - Purple and Yellow

Complimentary Colours - Green and Red

Monochromatic - Orange

Monochromatic - Blue

For the Grade 6's I made the study of colour schemes a much bigger project.  The reason for this, is simply because Grade 6's focus for art this year is colour, whereas, Grade 5's focus is shape.  

The Grade 6's learned about the following colour schemes: monochromatic, complimentary, tertiary (only secondary colours or only primary colours), and analogous (closest shades/tints of colour on colour wheel) colours.  I began with having the students draw any picture they wanted on a big piece of paper, making sure they knew that there had to be detail in all areas of the paper.  They then had to fold the paper into quadrants. Each quadrant was going to be a different colour scheme.  I went through each quadrant slowly with the students so that they would truly understand the different colour schemes.  This was the first of two projects worked on for exploring colour schemes.

Here are some results:

Their second project was to take one of the four colour schemes and make an abstract watercolour painting with shapes, using that colour scheme only.

Here are some of those results:

Analogous 

Monochromatic

My favourite project of the three are definitely the watercolour paintings!  It was a great project to help students grow in their skills of mixing and blending colours with watercolour paints.  I am excited to brighten the art room with these paintings!  

Feel free to use any ideas, but please do leave a comment if you do!

Dinosaurs

Quite a while ago, I talked about how my Grade 6 art class was making dinosaurs (Found here).  Finally, I will post about how they were made and how they turned out.  While it took a while, it was an art project that I would definitely recommend.  The students loved being able to make a type of 'sculpture' and being given the chance to be completely creative.  I would really recommend this project for any grade, however I do think it works best for smaller classes as there are many materials needed.  I even had students from Grades 4, 5, and 7 asking me if they could do that project too.  So, now I am left with the problem of trying to fit in a similar type of project for the other grades :).

Here are the materials and the step-by-step instructions as to how we made them:

Materials:

- Paper bag (1 per student)

- Scrap paper or magazines

- Masking Tape

- Tin Foil (3 sheets per student)

- Plasticine

- Tempera paint

- Toilet paper rolls (2 per student)

- Other odds and ends

Instructions:

1. First, the students were given one paper bag each, along with many scrap pieces of paper and magazines.  The students were then told to crumple up the scrap paper and stuff their paper bags with it.

2. When the paper bags were stuffed, the students were given three sheets of tin foil.  I had the students roll the tin foil pieces together into a thin snake like shape.  This was to be the neck and tail of their dinosaur.

3.  Masking tape was then given for the students to tape their tinfoil to the paper bag.  I had the students tape the end of the paper to the tin foil as well.  (I wish I had a picture of this, but unfortunately I do not.)

4.  Next, the students were given plasticine of the colour of their choice.  They were told to cover their tin foil with the plasticine.

(Example of dinosaurs half covered with plasticine)

(Example of dinosaurs with plasticine finished)

5.  The students were then able to paint the paper bag to match the colour of plasticine they choose.  (This will be the body of the dinosaur.)  They also painted two toilet paper rolls the same colour.  These would be the dinosaurs legs.

6. Once dried, students cut their toilet paper rolls in half and glued them to the bottom of the dinosaur as legs.  (I used a hot glue gun and glued them on myself to make things easier.)

7. For feet, students took plasticine again and put them at the bottom of the toilet paper rolls to help their dinosaur stand.  They also put plasticine between the toilet paper rolls and the body of the dinosaur to make sure they stayed.  

8.  Students were then given a chance to be creative with their dinosaur.  They could use different colours of plasticine, feathers, sequins, googly eyes, etc. to decorate their dinosaur.  

Here are some examples of the end results of the dinosaurs.  I only wished I had taken pictures of more of them - they all turned out so unique!

Dinosaurs - Grade 6

I know this project can seem a bit much, especially if you have a big class.  However, another option is to make it a group project.  They look great to display around the classroom and are definitely worth all the work!  Perhaps even using part of the project could be done - for example making a plasticine snake (Just use tin foil and plasticine!)

Currently I am working on colour schemes with my Grade 5's and 6's.  Be sure to come back for a look at those projects soon!

Picasso and Pointillism

Alright - Valentines Day is over, Report card season is coming to an end (finally), and tomorrow is the last day for clubs (yes, my school has clubs and I am in charge of cooking this semester - not the easiest club with Grades 1-3 :) - time for some blogging!  There have been many art projects that I've done in the past month or so that I've been super excited about and have been dying to share!  

Let's start with some obvious ones.  Picasso and pointilism.  These are two projects that I feel are necessary for students to have had at least once in their elementary years of art...but also time consumin.  Sometimes, they feel over done - but perhaps that's more of the teacher's view than the students.  

I worked on Picasso portraits with Grade 5.   I had the students draw a pencil sketch of their own portrait while looking at a mirror.  We went through the steps of how to draw a face, what goes where, and how to make it with the best proportion possible.  We then looked at different Picasso drawings, specifically looking at the abstraction, bright colours, and cubism used. Keeping this in mind, they drew their face again, except disoriented it, the way Picasso would have. I don't think I did as good of a job as I could have in teaching the students how to disorient the face on their portraits (as you will probably be able to see in the end result).  It's really important at this stage to have them disorient their face step by step.  The students then painted their face with watercolour paints, only using bright colours.  Last step - outlining each section with black marker.  

Here's how some of them turned out:

Picasso Portraits - Grade 5

Pointillism was done with Grade 6.  We first discussed Georges Seurat's usage of pointillism and why pointillism was used.  I then allowed the students to drawing any picture they chose (making sure they didn't draw too much detail in their pictures, so that the pointillism wouldn't take absolutely forever) and they used markers to make their pointillism pictures.  At the beginning, they were excited and really enjoyed it.  By the end, they just wanted to be done!  It took about 3 periods...and I could tell by the end the students were just so excited to move on to a new project!  But they pushed through and the results turned out great!  Here's a few of the results:

Pointillism - Grade 6

Stay tuned for my next blog post about the most recent art projects done with Grade 6 on Advertisements and Grade 4 on Perspective! 

Triangles in Our World

My Grade 5 art class is currently painting Picasso portraits.  However, because it was coming to the holidays and things were getting a little crazy with the Christmas concert and activities going on, I decided to put a hold on these projects and do a filler assignment.  Since Grade 5's focus this year is on shape, I had them do the following:

Triangles in Our World - Grade 5

They were each given one brown triangle (all the same size).  They were not allowed to cut the triangle but they could draw things on it if they wanted.  They then had to make the triangle into anything they could think of.  My favourites were the angry bird beak and the nacho.  A fun, little project if you are in need of a filler art assignment!