I am SO PROUD of my 5th and 6th graders on this project! We learned how to do a few different stitches and how to make patterns before they went off on their own and made monsters. Each student designed their very own and then carefully stitched on the facial features. I then sewed them up and returned them and they turned them right side out and stuffed them! I love how each of their personalities shined through their monsters. They are so hilarious and fun!
This one is going down as one of the coolest projects we have done yet...The fifth and sixth graders first project of the semester was creating these awesome agamographs! We studied a little bit about the artist Yaacov Agam and his beautiful agamographs that he created. His artworks are beautiful paintings that can be viewed from, and are different from, multiple angles.
We painted two paintings; one landscape and one object (or objects). We drew them first with pencil, then talked about some painting tips with acrylic paints. We also learned about warm and cool colors for the project. They then mixed their very own colors and made one of their paintings using only warm colors and one using only cool colors. Once our paintings were finished and dry we chopped them up and carefully assembled them to make our agamographs! I am so proud of how well they did on their paintings AND how well they did following directions on the assembly stage! It wasn't an easy project but they still did so well! Here are a few of the paintings before we chopped them up: One of my all time FAVORITE art teacher blogs to follow (and copy!) is Julia Sanderl's The Art Classroom. She does such creative things with her kids in Hawaii! One of my favorite projects that she does are these watercolor paintings that she did with marine animals. I decided to switch it up a little bit and have the fifth and sixth graders learn a little bit about an environment a little closer to home, the prairie.
We first went through a large list of possible prairie plants and animals that the kiddos could pick from. They then gave me their top three and in order to have a nice variety (I swear, they all wanted the long tailed weasel) I gave them out with only two kids per class per plant or animal. They then did research about their prairie object and found out where it sleeps, what it eats, what it's predators are, and what other things they might see while looking at their object to include in their picture. Once all of our research was done we discussed how to fill up the space of the page. They first drew in the prairie plant or animal, since it was the main subject of the painting, and then added in the background around it. We then traced out lines with sharpie and added our boxes for our watercolor portion. Their entire prairie plant or animal could be painted in with watercolors as well as anything inside the box. Once everything was drawn in and traced we tried out a few different watercolor techniques. I demonstrated them first, then they tried them out on their own, and then we discussed how they could use them in their paintings. I required them to at least try out three different techniques (out of 8) in their paintings. THEN once the watercolor was dry we added textures and details with sharpies before turning these in. The most impressive part of it all? We got this one done in 2 weeks! It was our fastest project yet! 2 weeks=10 days=300 minutes. My kids are so great! Our first semester of the 2015-2016 school year has come to an end, as much as we'd like to see it go on! Next semester at the middle school will hold all new classes with faces both new and old to the art room. Even with new groups and new faces who may not have worked on the Gnome Project, we will continue to track our gnomes as they travel around the world! This semester we had gnomes go to... Hutchinson, Kansas Naples, Florida Seattle, Washington Portland, Maine Austin, Texas Venus, Texas St. Louis, Missouri Fresno, California Edmonds, Washington The Bahamas St. Lawrence, South Dakota Sukhothai, Thailand Salzburg, Austria Stratford-Upon-Avon, England Thank you so much to everyone who has gone out of their way to take a picture of a gnome so far this year! We appreciate you so much! My kids were so excited every time one came in and we are looking forward to see where else our gnomes will go!
I have some pretty amazing 5th and 6th graders this year and I am really proud of all of their hard work so far this semester! These tree houses turned out so amazing! We practiced drawing in 2 pt perspective and drawing different parts of tree houses before they started. Then they brainstormed long lists of possible things they could find on a treehouse. They added details and textures and created these beautiful works of art! I am so proud!
While looking through past posts I realized that I completely spaced posting one of my very FAVORITE projects from last year that the 5th and 6th graders did. Last year the fifth and sixth graders made these hilarious beard and hair pictures using watercolor pencils and regular colored pencils. We first talked about how to draw different facial features before picking half of our face to draw into our picture. We then added in swirling beards and beehive hairdos and tucked items into them to make them weird! Once our pictures were drawn and traced we colored in our faces and items with colored pencils and then used watercolor pencils to color in the hair.
Our group gnomes are done, their letters are written, and our enveloped are addressed and ready to go. We just finished wrapping up the second part of our favorite gnome project and our gnomes are ready to be sent out all over the world. This year each table group created a gnome together. They drew all different parts of the gnome, colored it in together, and then co-wrote a letter from the gnomes perspective. We are sending out 21 gnomes to 12 different states and three different countries to start and we are so excited to get their pictures back. We will do a few posts featuring fun places that our gnomes have gone or you can also follow along on twitter by following us on @gaeddartroom.
After spending a few weeks focusing on creating realistic self portraits I thought it would be fun to switch it up a little and do some cartooning instead. I demonstrated the many different parts of a gnome and the different ways that they can be drawn before sending them off on their own to create a gnome. They also learned about tints and shades and complimentary colors and were to use those as they colored them in with colored pencils.
They also created a background story for their gnome in order to write a letter from their gnomes perspective. My first time doing the gnomes, during my student teaching, we sent out each and every kids gnome around the world for people to take pictures of. The kids loved it, but sending out 75 gnomes was just a lot and only a few of them actually had their picture taken and an even smaller fraction were actually sent back at the end of the year. So this year we are creating table gnomes as well to send out into the world instead. That way all of the kids will still have their own individual gnomes to keep for themselves. I will share their table group gnomes once they finish them! Man, do I have a lot of talent in my fifth and sixth grade classrooms! I have to say, it was incredibly difficult to narrow down to a reasonable amount of pictures to post on the blog. They all did such a wonderful job and I am very proud of their hard work on this first art project.
I try to do at least one self portrait, or portrait of some kind, a semester with every grade so that they can slowly progress at drawing people and also progress in their just general confidence in drawing people. I have found that the older they get the more they hate drawing themselves.. and I would like to try to fix that. For this self portrait project we studied the surrealist artists, specifically Rene Magritte. We noticed that Magritte used a lot of clouds, birds, and apples, and that often he would place an object in front of a person's face. We drew our self portraits in oil pastels and then added a dream like and weird background to match the surrealists. We then drew and cut out objects to place in front of our faces like Magritte. This week my fifth and sixth grade groups finished up their kilim rug inspired weavings. My room has been covered in tiny pieces of yarn for the last couple weeks as they have been weaving away on their looms. Each student designed their own weavings and built their own looms.
I think my favorite part about the project was how much fun they all had making them! I had a bunch of them tell me that they had built their own looms at home and were making weavings at home too. |
The artwork of the HES & HMS artists.
Art Projects by GradeArchives
December 2015
|