December in the Art Room

Fourth Grade artists are finishing their St. Basil's Cathedral Value drawings.  We learned about using different techniques to show light, medium, and dark values with markers: cross hatching, hatching, and stippling.

Kinder students are creating Snowman Collages using paper and glue.  They are making their paper have a little more texture by tearing the paper into pieces instead of cutting it with scissors.

2nd Graders are finishing up their O'Keeffe Flower Paintings!

Third grade artists are blending oil pastels to show light to dark values, and using artist Wassily Kandinsky as inspiration!

1st Grade Artists have been working hard on their Color Books.  They are almost complete, and students will be bringing them home this month to share with their families!

5th grade artists have been studying the great Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, and have created horse sculptures out of clay. Right now we are planning our glaze colors and are glazing next week!

New Artwork on Artsonia!

Fourth Graders finished their old House Sculptures, inspired by African American artist Beverly Buchanan!  Check them out here:
 4th Grade House Sculpture Gallery

 Kinder students just finished studying artist Piet Mondrian, and his use of primary colors.  They made a collage using primary colors, and stamp printed their black lines with cardboard and paint.  Look at them here:
Kinder Mondrian Collage gallery

2nd Grade artists finished their Austin cityscapes, using imaginary colors.  These are always one of my favorite projects: see them here: 2nd Grade Cityscape Gallery

Third Graders have been learning about Prehistoric Cave Art and created their own versions - check them out here! 3rd grade Prehistoric Cave Art

1st Graders have been learning about free form shapes, and created these amazing abstract drawings with glue and construction paper crayons.  See them here: 1st Grade Free Form Shape Gallery

Fifth Graders finished their Mexican Bark Paintings of an animal - these deserve to be hung in a place of honor at their houses! See them here: 5th Grade Mexican Bark Paintings

We have been really busy this Fall in Zilker Art Class!!  Hope you enjoy the beautiful art in our online museum!

September in Zilker Art Room!

 Kinder artists are learning all about free form shapes and the season of Autumn. Students used texture plates with images of leaves and rubbed crayons to get an impression of each leaf's free form shape. They covered their papers with many leaves of different colors.  The next art class we learned how to paint and use our brushes gently. We added different colors inside our leaf shapes.  Look for these on our online museum, Artsonia, soon!

 5th grade artists are learning all about Mexican Folk Art and have drawn an animal surrounded by rain forest with a pattern border.  Right now students are adding vivid colors to their drawings.  The paper is brown to mimic the bark paper that Mexican folk artists use in their own paintings.

 First grade artists learned about artist Paul Klee and looked closely at his artworks where he used geometric shapes to create villages or cities. Students then used paper geometric shapes to create their own villages, and are adding details like textures, windows, doors, and other shapes to their collages with construction paper crayons.

 Fourth grade artists are studying the artwork of Beverly Buchanan, and looking closely at her sculptures.  Students are creating their own house sculptures out of cardboard.  Texture and variety of shapes and details are part of the criteria for this project.  This is a favorite project of many students, and my fourth graders are finally working on their own this year after seeing past students house sculptures!

 Second grade artists are studying the shapes of their city: Austin.  Students drew a downtown view of Austin with the State Capital building as the centerpiece, and are now adding imaginary bright colors to their cityscapes, just like the Fauvist artists of the early 20th century.


 Third grade artists are studying the very beginning of human-created art....Prehistoric Cave art!  We looked carefully at 20,000 year old images painted in the Lascaux Cave in France, and then practiced drawing some of the same animals: bison, ibex, jaguars, cows, horses and bears. Students will pick their best idea to use in their final art piece!

1st and 2nd Graders Celebrate International Dot Day!

First and Second graders listened to the story of "The Dot" during their first day of art class.  We learned the importance of trying, and never giving up, which is part of the wonderful message in the book by Peter Reynolds.  Students then choose to make either a dot, or a "not dot." Here is all of their beautiful dots and "not dots" hanging in the hallway at Zilker just in time for INTERNATIONAL DOT DAY, which is "September 15ish." Here's to an amazing beginning of the 2016-2017 school year!

Last Art Projects of the 2015 - 2016 School Year

5th Grade went outside in Jabo's Garden, chose a plant to draw, and are now adding watercolor techniques to their plant drawings.  It was great to get outside to work in nature! 

4th Grade Artists are busy creating relief Pop Art prints of cupcakes, based on Wayne Thiebaud's art style.

 Third Grade artists are weaving.  We are learning four different weaving techniques: tabby weave, Egyptian knot, tapestry shapes and tapestry slits. We will mount these on paper once we get them off of the cardboard looms!

Hydria Black-Figure Pot

Amphora Black-Figure Pot

Second Grade artists are studying the paintings on Ancient Greek pottery, and drawing Greek gods and goddesses as well as Greek patterns on either an amphora pot shape, a hydria pot, or a krater pot. We will be adding color with color pencils.  Students are either drawing Black-figure or Red-figure style.

Krater Red-Figure Pot

Hydria Red-Figure Pot

 1st Grade Artists are studying Impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh, and using his technique with oil pastels to each create a "Starry Night Over Austin."

 Last but not least, Kinder artists are studying American pop artist Jasper Johns, and creating their own paintings about letters or numbers.  Most of these projects will be up in our Artsonia Online Museum when they are completed, so check them out at the following link in a few weeks.

I cannot believe it is already near the end of the 2015-2016 school year.  Thanks so much for your support of the Fine Arts at Zilker Elementary, and stay tuned for some new fun projects for the new school year, including a surprise outdoor art room!