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!

Advertisements and Perspective

Since Grade 6 did such a great job persevering through their long Pointillism project (see here), I wanted to give them something a little more fun for their next project.  I decided to work on advertisements with them.  I found this great idea on the following blog:  Mrs. Dahl: Projects from the Classroom .   

I had the Grade 6s make an advertisement for candy or a chocolate bar of their choice.  The catch was, the candy bar had to be 3D on their paper.  They were given cardboard, tin foil, felt, and any other scrap they could find to use.  The candy bar had to be 3D and the rest of the paper had to be advertising this candy bar.  This project was different from any I had given them yet this year - their first 3D project.  The results were great!  (You will notice a lot of colourful dots - They found some bingo dabbers and could not get enough haha)

Pop Up Advertisements - Grade 6

I just find these so creative!  Definitely a little more enjoyable for the students than the pointillism as well :)

While Grade 6 was allowed to let their creativity shine through their project, I did a little more of a  structured project with the Grade 4 class - One Point Perspective.  Since the focus for Grade 4 is the element of line, I thought it was a good grade to do some perspective drawing with.  I found this great lesson plan (with drawing steps and everything!) on the following blog: smART Class .  These steps were amazing and so helpful!  I will admit - perspective is not my strong point.  But these steps made it so easy to teach!  And helped the students come to a very clear understanding of it.  I highly recommend checking out her blog if you are considering teaching perspective!  Here are a few of the results:

One Point Perspective - Grade 4

While I told the students they could either do a street scene or a river scene they all chose street.  I had them colour with pencil crayons all the detailed items, and then do the background with watercolour.  If I was to do it again, I definitely would have had them colour with crayons and cover the background with watercolour after that, so that the crayon would nicely show through the watercolour.

Well that's all for now. This week, Grade 6 is working on making dinosaurs out of paper bags, tin foil, plaster-sine, toilet paper rolls, and paint. I am really looking forward to seeing the end results!  This is how far we are:

Well, enjoy your week and thanks for stopping by!  Feel free to leave me a comment or two! :)

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! 

Recent Art Projects Cont.

I had a minute or two to take some more pictures today, amidst the busyness of getting ready for the Christmas concert coming up this Thursday.  So, here are some more art projects that the kids have recently done.  

Comics - Grade 6

Grade 6 just finished making comics and are now beginning a project on pointillism after learning about Georges Seurat.  Comics was a fun project giving them the chance to be completely creative, using pictures to display a story.  I gave very minimal guidelines for this project.  

Faith Trees - Grade 6

These Faith Trees were made in order for students to have the ability to express their faith. They were to find words in magazines that reflected their faith life.  An easy and quick activity.  Looking through magazines is always a favourite!

Watercolour Landscapes - Grade 4

By far, these were my favourite projects in the last month.  We started with a class on experimenting with watercolours and blending colours and then moved into these landscapes.  Since my Grade 4 class is such a small class, I find it to be one of my favourite classes to paint with.  For many of these students it was one of their first times using watercolours.  I think they did a great job!  

Now, time to relax after a long day of practising, making and putting away costumes, and meetings... oh yeah.. and some teaching in between.  Two or three more days of that and a week left of teaching - I am ready for that break! :)

Recent Art Projects

Just today I changed a bunch of my art bulletin boards for a fresh new look before the holidays.  Before I took them down I made sure to take some pictures.  Here are some examples of some art work I have been doing with my Grade 4 through 8 art classes.

Colour Wheels - Grade 6

These Colour Wheels were an introduction to the element of colour for the Grade 6s.  Colour is their focus for the year.  It was a great lesson for teaching the Grade 6s how to mix colours as we only used red, yellow, and blue paint.  They were able to use these colour wheels afterwards to help them with an opposites picture, which taught them more about complimentary colours.  (If interested just message me!)

Silhouettes - Grade 7/8 

These silhouettes were started off with learning about watercolours and how to blend watercolours.  Students were then to make a silhouette image on top of the dried watercolour with tempera black paint.  I enjoyed this project but didn't see the results that I was hoping for.  I must think of a way to enhance this lesson next time.  

Expressions with Line - Grade 4

Grade 4 is focusing on the element of line this year.  This assignment was taken from the previous art teacher.  Students had to come up with line designs when given an expression or feeling.  They then made one of these line designs into an oil pastel piece.  I loved how these turned out!  Not to mention the amount of creativity that was used when coming up with these!

Hopefully soon I can take pictures of the new projects that we have come up with.  Teaching art is turning out to be such a fun and interesting experience!  I love seeing the creative pieces that the students can come up with!