AustinISD's Youth Art Month Display

 Last month Austin ISD held their annual district-wide Art Show.  Each art teacher in the entire district has a small space to display their top artists at the One Congress Plaza building.  It is always a difficult task picking only 10 to 15 artworks to represent Zilker Elementary.  These amazing artworks created by Zilker's fantastic artists represented Zilker Elementary this year!

 Congratulations to second graders Chris M. and Mathew A. whose great wild thing watercolors were displayed!

 Shout out to fifth grade artists Luka V. and Kensley M. for their well-executed Aboriginal dot paintings.

 First grade artists Dash S. and Micah M.  rocked it with their beautiful oil pastel interpretations of Van Gogh's Starry Night.

 Second Grade artists Reyna G. and Laurel J. created beautiful tropical bird collages inspired by artist Eric Carle.

 Fifth Grade artists Emma S. and Hailey L.  also made amazing Aboriginal Dot Paintings that represented Zilker at the district show.

Last but not least, second grade artists Genesis C. and Aislyn T. had their tropical birds chosen for the display.

A big congratulations to these artists who honored all Zilker Elementary artists by representing our school in the district show!

Kinder Fish Sculptures

Pattern, Pattern Pattern!!  We are all about pattern in Kindergarten art class, using the elements of line, shape and color to create the principle of design: pattern.  Students started with a 12 x 18 piece of paper and folded it so that there were eight sections, and then added bright patterns with crayons.  Next, we painted watercolor on top of the patterns to create a crayon resist painting.

After the paintings dried, we cut and glued and transformed them into fish sculptures!   We added more line patterns to the fins, and stuffed the fish with paper so that they were three dimensional and not flat.  We also talked about how the patterns on the fish's bodies were a symbol for the actual scales on real fish.  Our next project concerns symbols, so this was a perfect introduction to our next big idea: Symbolism in Art!

3rd Grade Weavings

Third grade art students are learning about fiber art and creating weavings on a loom. Students learned the tabby weave, the Egyptian knot, and added a shape as well as tapestry slits beside the shape.

Students also created a beautiful frame for their weavings, decorating it with patterns and neutral colors.  Check these out at the 2014 School-wide Art Show.

4th Grade Clay Cupcake Sculptures

Fourth Grade students have been studying the American Pop artist Wayne Thiebaud.  We created relief prints of desserts in his style, and then moved on to a three dimensional clay project, concentrating on his cupcakes.   We used clay methods of slipping and scoring to attach separate clay pieces, and created a cupcake sculpture that is also a container. A quick shout-out to the great site The Art of Ed for providing a free lesson plan that inspired me to try this with my students!

With the amazing low fire glazes, these cupcakes look real enough to eat! Here is a sneak peek of the sculptures; all will be on display for Zilker's School-wide Art show opening on Friday, April 11th at 6pm!