Happy Holidays from Zilker Special Areas Teachers!!

Zilker's Festival of Lights

Zilker students are helping to paint a special mural that will be part of Zilker's second annual Festival of Lights. Please join us Friday, December 16th, at the front of the school at 6pm. We will have a trail of lights, food vendors, artists selling crafts, and wonderful holiday singing from our own Zilker Panthers under the guidance of Ms. Price, our music teacher. Rumors are also circulating that Santa may even pay Zilker a visit that evening! Please join us for an evening of family fun and look for the finished mural...it will be interactive!!

3rd Grade Clay Fish Sculpture

Third Graders are working hard on their clay fish sculptures. First, we sculpted the body of the fish using a baseball sized piece of clay. Then we added side fins on using another piece of clay. In order to attach the separate piece permanently, students had to first score both pieces of clay, then add slip, which is clay mixed with water that acts like a glue. Finally, students smoothed the seams between the two pieces of clay.
The next art class we were able to add details with clay tools. Students had to draw eyes, gills, and carve a mouth for their fish. Then students added texture on the bodies. Next, students used the clay pin tool to draw lines on all of the fins. The sculptures look fabulous. They are now drying and will be ready to go into the kiln the second week of December. Our final step will be painting one color of glaze onto the bisque-fired ceramic surface of the fish.

4th & 5th Architecture Drawings

Fourth and Fifth grade architectural drawings are on display at Zilker! They are intricate and amazing to look at in person. Students worked so hard and created wonderful patterns, all with a sharpie pen. Thanks to the blog Deep Space Sparkle where I got the lesson idea!

5th Grade Perspective Drawings

Fifth Graders are working on one-point perspective drawings of art galleries. Students had to use six perspective techniques in their artwork: converging lines, size, overlapping, color, detail, and placement. Here students are using their creativity to design the artwork on the walls and sculptures on the floor. Students are also paying close attention to their color, and using atmospheric perception to try to make the artworks on the side walls appear closer than the artworks on the back wall.

2nd grade artists study Georgia O'Keeffe

Second graders are learning all about Georgia O'Keeffe. We read the book "My Name is Georgia" by Jeanette Winter, and students took notes about Georgia's life. We looked at several of her paintings, concentrating on her flower paintings.

Students then drew a technical drawing of a flower, labeling the separate parts. Students will be drawing expressive flowers in preparation for a flower painting. We will also be studying the intermediate colors and choosing one of them for the larger petals in the final flower painting.

First Grade Color Books

First Grade students are learning all about color! Students mixed primary colors to create secondary colors and made their own color wheels.

Then students learned about the complementary colors, the colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel.

Students created paintings using the cool colors: violet, green, and blue.

Students also created warm color paintings using red, orange, and yellow.

Kinder Five Senses Book

Kinder art students are working on a whole unit about their Five Senses: Hearing, Seeing, Touching, Smelling, and Tasting. Each art day we have an experience exploring each of the five senses. Students draw about their experiences, and after we have explored all of the senses we put the drawings together to make a book. In these photos students are touching objects that are hidden inside cups and socks. This way students have to rely only on their sense of touch to identify the hidden objects. They then try to draw the objects.

Fourth Grade Artists build house sculptures

Fourth graders are working hard on their house sculptures. First we brain-stormed adjectives that could describe older houses that had been neglected or abandoned. Some adjectives students thought of were: spooky, old, worn, tired, rickety, crooked, scary, sad, creaky, suspicious, dusty, rough, cold, forgotten, mysterious, and different. Then we started constructing the bottom walls of the house. Students learned that this project uses a lot of glue! Next we added a second level, roofs, and details like windows, boards, and shutters. Because the sculpture is three-dimensional, students are trying hard to make each side of the house interesting and varied. Check out some of their work in progress!

Third Grade study the art of Laurel Burch

Third Graders are studying artist Laurel Burch. We concentrated on her beautiful paintings of cats and dogs. Each student practiced drawing different dogs or cats with imaginary patterns and human expressions. Students picked their best one to add oil pastel to. Before adding the color, students outlined their pencils lines with glue. Then students planned out their colors, making sure they had one pair of complementary colors. Complementary colors are colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel. Then students added oil pastels.

2nd Grade Cityscapes

Shapes, lines, and imaginary colors...that's what second grade artists have been studying. Students drew part of Austin's downtown skyline, then choose the time of day and added a few details in the sky and on Ladybird Lake. Here you can see them adding imaginary color to their drawings with watercolors. LOVE the colors!!