2nd Grade Georgia O'Keeffe Flower Paintings

Students are learning about the American artist Georgia O'Keeffe. We read a book about her life, and looked at many of her paintings, especially her flower paintings.
We also talked about the intermediate colors, which are created when a primary color and a secondary color are mixed together. We practiced drawing flowers by looking at photos of flowers as well as reproductions of O'Keeffe's flower paintings. Then students practiced mixing intermediate colors with crayons first, then created their own color wheels with paint.

Students drew technical drawings of flowers as well, labeling the different parts of the flower: stem, leaf, sepal, pistil, stamen, stigma, and petal.

Last, we began painting our own flower paintings, after choosing our best drawings and our favorite intermediate color for the large petals.

Fourth Grade Clay Masks

Students are adding texture, pattern, shapes, and lines to their clay masks. The needle tool is the main tool used, but students are also using plastic modeling tools to stamp textures. Look closely at some of their intricate designs!

Third Grade Laurel Burch Cats

Third Graders are working on their Laurel Burch cat drawings. After waiting for glue lines to dry, students worked on picking complementary colors and planning out where to place the colors on their cats. Here students are adding the colors using oil pastels.

Fourth Grade Rain Forest Drawings

Fourth Graders looked at Henri Rousseau's Jungle paintings for inspiration, as well as photos and books about rain forests all over the world. We discussed how plants in the rain forests are fighting for sunlight, and how there is very little open space in the jungle. Students could choose one or two animals to place in their drawings as well. In these photos, students are adding color to their drawings.

Second Grade Matisse Collage

Second Graders have worked hard on their Henri Matisse Collages. Students learned to "draw with scissors" - a technique that Matisse described as cutting out shapes
without drawing the shapes first. Students cut out all sizes of free form shapes, starting with larger shapes first, and then overlapping with smaller shapes. Students also had to think about color as they planned their collages.




Here are students placing their shapes onto their collages, then rearranging them in different places until they were pleased with the composition. They glued down pieces after trying different ideas.

Fourth Grade Haunted Houses: Spooky indeed!!

We are finally finished with our Haunted Houses! I added the spray paint, and as a final touch students glued a few spider webs for an authentic "creepy" look. Students then wrote a short description or story about their house. Students agreed that having built their houses helped them get their creative writing ideas flowing.

Kinder Free Form Shapes: Leaf Paintings

Kinder students are learning a lot this month! We talked about free form shapes and looked around the art room for examples. Then we created texture rubbings with leaf texture plates and crayons, since leaves are excellent examples of free form shapes. The next class we talked about painting and how to use our brushes gently. Here are students using their brushes to add colors to their leaves with tempera paints.

Fifth Grade Perspective Drawings

Fifth Grade Art students are busy creating three dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface. Inspired by Vincent Van Gogh's painting "Bedroom in Arles", students are creating an interior gallery space on their papers using several perspective techniques, including converging lines, overlapping, size, and shadows. Each student gets to decide what kind of art is hanging in his or her gallery. We are finishing this great project by adding color with color pencils.

First Grade Free Form Shapes

First Graders cut out their very own free form shapes, then traced it many times on a black piece of paper. Here they are tracing those lines with glue, which can be tricky! Next, we will add color inside the free form shapes, after the glue had had time to dry.

Kinder Line & Shape Collage

Kinder Art students are working hard on their line and shape collages. Today we added color and detail with markers.

Fourth Graders: Haunted Houses and Ghostly Stories

Fourth Graders are working on their new project - Haunted Houses! We are using cardboard and glue for the basic structure of the house...lots of glue! Check out how much we've built so far. We will be writing ghost stories in Language Arts, so hopefully these haunted houses will help spark our imaginations and inspire some descriptive adjectives.