1st Grade, 2nd Grade, and 4th Grade: Current Art Projects

 First Graders are studying Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh, and creating their own version of the "Starry Night" using oil pastels.  Here are some students demonstrating Van Gogh's technique of using short strokes to add color to their papers.

 Second Grade artists looked at Pablo Picasso's Rose period paintings, and then we discussed the art element of VALUE.  Students mixed red and white to make tints of red, and red with black to make shades of red, and created these heart paintings that are full of patterns!

 Fourth Grade artists have been studying the American artist Wayne Thiebaud, who just celebrated his 94th birthday in November!  Here students have already sculpted their cup cakes out of clay, and are adding color with glazes.  Stay tuned for more news next week!

4th Grade Pop Art Cupcake Sculptures

Sculpting with clay.

Adding details with a pin tool.

 Adding color with glaze.

 Finished works after firing in the kiln.

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!

4th Grade Wayne Thiebaud Dessert Prints

 Fourth Grade students have been studying the Pop Art of artist Wayne Thiebaud and his dessert paintings and prints.  Students practiced drawing many different kinds of desserts, using shading techniques like hatching, cross-hatching, and stippling to show texture and shadows.  Students chose their best drawing to turn into a relief print.  They traced their drawing onto a piece of Styrofoam, engraving the lines into the Styrofoam.  The following photos show most of the steps they had to take to make their prints.

Here a student carefully rolls the brayer loaded with ink across his or her Styrofoam printing plate.

Here a student is loading the brayer with printing ink so he can carefully get his printing plate ready for printing.

These two photos show students placing the printing plate face down onto a paper, and then rubbing the back of the paper carefully to help print the ink evenly on the front of the paper.

Another student rolling ink onto his printing plate to get ready to print.

And here are two students carefully pulling their prints; taking the paper off of the printing plate to reveal their final prints!

 A delicious slice of cake!

 A decadent ice cream sundae!

An amazing triple scoop ice cream cone!

Here are a few of the finished prints!  They make me hungry just looking at them!  All the students did a fantastic job at all of the many steps it took to create their prints!