Visiting Artist Michael Hildago

Zilker parent and ceramic artist Michael Hildago visited Zilker art class on May 5th to give a demonstration to his daughter's Kinder class!  Mr. Hidalgo showed students how he creates mugs and pots on the wheel. 

He started a very large mug, and asked students what kind of details to give it to turn it into a monster mug.  Students gave ideas about eyes, nose, ears, arms, and hair.  Mr. Hidalgo also showed students how to attach two separate pieces of clay using the scoring method.

You can tell he enjoys working with clay!

Here is the finished piece!  Students really enjoyed having a real live artist visit our art class and share his techniques with them.  Thanks so much Michael!!

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.

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!

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!