Showing posts with label landscape lessons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label landscape lessons. Show all posts

Friday, November 30, 2018

In the Art Room: Jen Aranyi Inspired Landscapes

Working on a fun new landscape lesson with my third grade kiddos that I'm so excited about, I just had to share...even if we have not finished them yet! We are learning about the artist Jen Aranyi who I discovered on Instagram and I LOVE. Turns out, so do my students! They are so excited about this project. 

We are working on cardboard pizza rounds that I have purchased from Amazon, Gordon Food Services and any restaurant supply place. I usually get a box of 100 for $20. They come in a couple different sizes and I let my kids decide if they wanted a large 14" circle or a smaller 10" one. 

Unlike the video, I actually had my kiddos use a pencil and THIS DRAWING SHEET first. Having this sheet really helped serve as a reminder for my kids after I'd gone thru the landscape directions. They drew in pencil first and then traced with Sharpie. Next week, we'll start the watercolor skies!

Here's the video I created just for you and my kids! Feel free to use in your art teacherin' world. Be sure to take Jen and I on IG when you do this lesson with you students. We would love to see!
Thank you to Jen Aranyi for her sweet words and support about this project. Her work is simply wonderful. Be sure and check her out!
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Thursday, May 11, 2017

In the Art Room: Rizzi City by Third Grade

 A while back, I had two third grade classes that were a head of the pack (I see my third and fourth grade classes combined, meaning I have two classes at once. It's how I am able to get an hour with my older kids). I didn't want them to jump ahead to the next project so I got a WILD hair (I get many, it turns out) and decided that they should learn about James Rizzi and create a giant Rizzi City...in one class period. Crazy is as crazy does, whatever that means. 
 I allowed the kids to pick their Rizzi City Building Teams with groups of 4 kids. I had a mountain of large painted papers for the kids to pick from as the base for their building. Smaller papers were used for the roof tops. 
I often have a stockpile of such papers because when my students finish early, one of the options for them is to go paint some pattern papers. I'll lay sheets of bulletin board paper out, paint a pattern on it and they are to repeat the pattern. These papers are then used for large projects such as this. 
 After the teams picked their building paper and roof, they set to work with scissors, glue and mountains of papers for windows, doors and faces. We'd spent some time going through a prezi I had created on the artist, so we were feeling all sorts of inspired. 
Once the pieces were glued down, the kids were allowed to use white and/or black paint to add details. The kids really loved working together to create their building and they turned out so fun and happy. A fellow teacher said they reminded them of PeeWee's Playhouse which you know is a HUGE compliment!
 For our art show next week, I thought I'd get these bad boys up! There is a cork strip behind the buildings. With the help of my P.E. buddy, I got the buildings pinned in place and just added a couple of lines of hot glue to the tops of the buildings. They'll stay up until the start of the new school year. OR when the Fire Marshall says to take 'em down. 

Then I got ANOTHER wild hair and decided that the buildings needed some clouds above them. This was totally a pinterest idea, y'all. I picked up a set of 6 light up lanterns at the local craft place and, with the help of my other P.E. buddy (what would I do without my specials team?!), we hot glued cotton batting to the lanterns. They won't stay up for long, just until the art show. 
The fact that they light up pretty much makes my world go round. 
 If I had all the time in the world, I would have had the kids then create a Rizzi-inspired cityscape. But, alas, this was just a go-between project to slow down a group that was speeding ahead. 
This has gotten a lot of giggles from the kiddos (and adults!). These buildings are as fun as Rizzi's paintings, says me. 
So much to do until the art show next Tuesday...but I can scratch this off the list!
We had more buildings than we did space...which meant that some of the buildings had to flank our It's Okay mural from last year. I can't bear to take it down, I love the message! 
 Um, yes. 
I can't wait to give y'all a tour of the art show...until then, have a fun Friday! 
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Tuesday, August 4, 2015

In the Art Room: My Fave Landscape Lessons

Hey, y'all! Welcome to another installment of my Back to Art Teacherin' series! I kicked off this series with a lil What to Wear-ness and a Giveaway where y'all had to indulge me in your fave back-to-school-clothes shopping stories. I loved each and everyone but I gotta say, this one from Michelle was one of my faves:

My favorite, and most embarrassing, back-to-school memory involves my dad taking me and my two sisters shopping for back to school clothes...way back in the eighties! There was plenty of black and neon combinations, acid wash jean skirts, and at least one knitted cat sweater involved, which was my favorite thing. We were so proud of our gear that we begged our dad to film us putting on a fashion show - complete with commentary by my sister and some hilarious bloopers, including a particularly confident walk by my eight-year-old self, all the while with my hair tucked into the neck of my prized cat sweater (there were some quick dress changes!) and followed by three full turns at the end of the “catwalk” (I think I had figure skaters and fashion models confused at the time). My dad filmed it all on his old school video camera, the kind that was so large it had to be propped up on his shoulder and held a full-sized VHS tape! The evidence still exists!

Congrats, Michelle, on your grab bag of art teacherin' books win! Now, don't ya'll leave me hanging for our next fun-ness...don't forget to snap a photo of what you wear on your first day back to school! I know many of you either have already started (in which case, just snap a photo of any ole art teacherin' day, I won't tell!) or don't start back for a while. No worries! I don't plan to share the post until the end of Auggie/start of Septie. More details here
Now if all y'all are like me, unit planning, lesson writing and sample making are in full swing. This is also the time that I find myself getting a lil stumped and frustrated. And ain't nobody got time for that! So I thought I'd share with y'all a sprinkling of my very fave landscape and self-portrait lessons to kick off your school year! 

For starters, this landscape project you see above was created by my fourth grade students last year. I loved it because it was a color mixing lesson that produced the mostly lovely of hues as well as unique paintings. All the landscape-y color mixing deets here, kids. 
One of my fave projects my second graders tackled last year were these Chilean-inspired arpilleras. We used textured and printed papers, collage, origami for the houses, puffy paint and stitching for the border. So much fun in one project! 
After our big chalk episode this year, the classes that didn't participate were really interested in the medium. So I took advantage of that interest of theirs and introduced them to the artist Sushe Felix and her lovely landscapes! The kids loved working with chalk and thought this technique to be simply magical. 
I love meshing several art lessons into one project. I find that the experience for the children is more rich and the artwork lovely. If you think about it, artists don't usually create in one medium solely independent of another. Meaning, they don't make a collage with just paper or a weaving with just yarn but they mesh many different techniques and supplies. By introducing that style of art making to children we are showing them that the processes taught can be applied to the creation of something magical and great
I know, y'all. It ain't no wheres close to winter yet but this here is one of my fave kindergarten landscape lessons! It's always sweet to see their wintery scenes...and I'm convinced that each year, these babies bring us the luck of snow! 
Who says landscape lessons have to be taught two-dimensionally? This tree weaving is one of my faves of all time and can really introduce so many concepts on both landscape, scale, perspective and weaving! 
You know how people are always giving us the weirdest things? Like, toilet paper tubes, for zample? One year, when learning about Medieval times, the fourth grade used 'em to create these totes tubular castles
But even without the castles, these landscapes look all kinds of awesome, says me.
These Egyptian desert landscapes were created by my first grade artists. Can you believe the lil Leonardo was such a wiz with those camel-cutting scissors, y'all?! 
Introducing cultures with collage landscape is always a good idea (kinda like Paris). These second graders knocked this project outta the park! 
Tho this first grade artist did a pretty magnifique! Another use of those ole t.p. tube, y'all. 

Okay, now I'm all kinds of excited to start the year with some super landscape painting projects! Our theme at the start of this year is Henri Rousseau-inspired jungles...I can't wait to see what my wee artists create! What are some of your fave landscape lessons? I'd love to know!

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