New England Autumn Landscapes-4th grade

This artwork is a little late getting displayed, but better late than never!

Amy-4th gr.

Matteo-4th grade

Ashley-4th grade

4th graders created a New England autumn landscape in connection with their social studies unit on regions.  The students used a masking tape resist technique to create the trees and planned their composition using foreground, middle ground, and background to create the illusion of space and distance.  They taped different sized strips of masking tape to their paper to create the trees in the fore, middle, and background.  The land and sky were painted using tempera cakes.  When the paint dried, the tape was peeled away to reveal areas of white paper.  Details were added turning the areas of white paper into birch trees.  Other details were added using colored pencils.

Idea thanks to mrsbrownart.com

1st grade Snowman Sculptures

Here is the finished product!  The snowmen turned out great and are a school-wide favorite!  After the sculptures were finished first graders drew a portrait of their snowman.

Clay snowmen-- First Grade

First grade had their first experience with clay in the art room!  We have been discussing form and how forms differ from shapes in that they are three dimensional and take up space.  In an earlier lesson we talked about geometric shapes; circles, squares, and triangles, for example.  For this lesson, we used spheres, cubes, and cones to create a snowman.  The students learned how to roll their clay into spheres and make cubes and cones from spheres.  They learned that they must score the clay and use slip to attach their pieces of clay.  While they all used the same steps to create their snowman, each is so unique.  The snowmen will dry to a greenware state and then be fired in the kiln.  Stop by again to see the finished product!

Cityscape Collage Mural--2nd grade

In the spirit of 20th century American artist, Romare Bearden, 2nd grade created cityscape collage murals.  In art, we looked at how cities were depicted through paintings and photographs, while in social studies the students were studying cities as a part of their unit on communities.  To begin, the students made Styrofoam prints of parts of a city....buildings, vehicles, monuments.  Next, they created paper collages of buildings, transportation and people.  As a group they decided the placement of all their pieces of art, keeping in mind the use of space and overlapping while also trying to achieve the fullness and frenzy of a city.  The results are a treat to see and capture the sense of a city so well!

Self-Portraits--3rd Grade

Third grade artists viewed the self-portraits of master artists and discussed the difference between portraits and self-portraits.  They began their paintings by drawing their head, neck, and shoulders and then mixing their own skin tones.  Looking in a mirror, the boys and girls studied the placement of their facial features. Using a wet on dry painting technique they painted their facial features.  Once their portrait was complete the students chose an interesting color or pattern to paint the background.

Autumn

First grade looked to autumn to create their next two pieces of art work. The unit began with texture and creating a landscape using visual texture. Through class discussion, we identified the difference between actual and visual texture. Actual texture is something that can be felt, visual texture is how an object might feel if you could touch it. The students began their landscapes by determining where they wanted their horizon line. Once the land and sky were established, the students made rubbings which would later be developed into trees. As a class we discussed the "Y shape" of trees and trees and branches were cut in this formation. The layout of the composition was next with a demonstration of tree placement and overlapping of branches to create three dimensional space within their picture. As a finishing touch the students made leaves and leaf piles by tearing construction paper.
The second piece of artwork was a tree sculpture created from a paper bag. The students learned that shapes were flat like a piece of paper, but trees took up space and had form. The students created their trees by cutting, crumpling, and twisting the bag to resemble roots, trunk and branches.

















Paper tree sculpture idea courtesy of Art with Mrs. Brown

Name Designs

The fifth grade students used radial symmetry to create these name designs. Radial symmetry occurs when lines or shapes spread out from a center point. The boys and girls designed their name and repeated it around a center point on their paper. Using markers they added color to the positive shapes (their name) and negative shapes (the background). See if you can identify the artist who's name is hidden within their artwork!

A Bug's Life--More student work

A Bug's Life--4th Grade

Fourth grade artists created landscapes from a bug's point of view using a crayon resist and watercolors. The students worked with scale and tried to imagine how big the world would be to an insect.

Warm and Cool Hands-- Third Grade Art

Third grade used warm and cool colors and pattern to create these tempera paintings. The students viewed artwork by native people and how their hand print was not only a record of who they were or where they had traveled, but also a way to sign their art. The students each used their hand prints to sign their paintings.

Notice how the warm colors (red, orange, and yellow) advance and the cool colors (blue, green, and violet) recede? This color effect creates an optical illusion. The boys and girls loved this trick of the eye! The boys and girls also learned how to "let their paintbrush do the work" while working with the cake tempera, a new medium for the third graders.

GOT ART?

Come back next week! I'll be featuring work from 3rd and 4th grade!

Lines and Colors and Shapes....Oh My!

First grade started their Barrows art experience learning about primary and secondary colors, geometric and free-form shapes, and line variety. The students incorporated these elements of art into an abstract painting. On day two of our painting we took a break from the painting process to conduct an art experiment. After reading the book, Mouse Paint, the boys and girls mixed cups of primary colored water to make secondary colors. They then had fun experimenting with mixing all three colors together.

Second grade paper sculptures

Second grade viewed stabiles by Alexander Calder. Stabiles are large, outdoor sculptures made from welded and riveted sheets of metal. The students constructed colorful sculptural "playgrounds" by folding, bending, twisting, and joining paper strips.

October Newsletter

Welcome to the Barrows Art October newsletter and my first blog! Please check in periodically as the format may change from a monthly newsletter to a more frequently updated blog. It's hard to believe that a month of school has passed and I am so pleased at the artwork the Barrows' boys and girls have been creating. Please read on to catch up on what each grade has been working on.....