Studio Art: Masters Paintings

On the tail feathers of our zentangled masters project in Studio Art, I decided to follow-up with a master's painting project.  I figured that this was probably going to be our last big project before the end of the year.  This week ends the 5 week marking period of the last quarter.  For high school in our district, they technically only really attend school for 8 weeks of the 10 week quarter, as the last two weeks are for exams.  So, the rest of the school year will be for review (per student request) and for my exam and post-assessment drawing.  

My students wanted to do a sculpture project and a painting project, so I tried to find something that would fit both interests.  Before the spring break, some of my studio students had a little bit of free time to create art while others finished up, and one student created a sculpture using cardboard and paper towel rolls.  I thought that this was something we could all do so I did a little searching on Pinterest.  I found this pin, which showed how to make a 3-D letter out of cardboard, paper cups and masking tape.  I altered it a bit and used the paper towel rolls (which ironically depleted my stock!  Never in my almost four years of teaching now have I ever depleted my paper towel/TP roll stock!) instead of cups.  I then found this pin, which completed my idea for this project.

Students covered the sculptures with masking tape (which, much like the packing tape people sculptures we made, took a lot more tape than I thought it would).  Some did a really neat job doing it, which gave them a nice smooth painting surface, while others just slapped the tape on their however they wanted.  One thing I found that we had to do was put two layers on the outside edge, one layer horizontally across and then another layer vertically down to cover any gaps in the tape.

After the letters were taped up, I had students paint two coats of gesso over the cardboard and tape to create a good painting surface.

Here are some in-progress pictures of this project.  It is currently due this Friday, however I know I will have some stragglers who won't finish until later next week.  It's ironic...all the students ever do is want to copy other things in their art but when you ask them to copy a master's painting, suddenly "copying sucks!".  I almost think that this kind of project would be good to use with a group of students who are constantly plagiarizing others in their artwork...

A Monet...turning out amazing!

We have quite a few VanGogh's and Renoir's.

I allowed one person to do a Jackson Pollock in each class, as well as one Mondrian.  I tried to steer the lower students towards those artists.

I also think that this project is a great one to use for impressionism.  I have to say that impressionism is probably my favorite art movement and the style of painting is one that I favor myself.  The students who are doing impressionist paintings are actually enjoying themselves and finding that it isn't that difficult to get the same effect that the artist did!

Finished 3rd Grade Castles!

We are FINALLY finishing up with our cardboard castles (you can see how we built them here)!  Between vacation time, half-days and snow days, it seems like we've been working on them FOREVER (since the end of January)!  These took up soooo much room in my classroom, I'm glad to be done with them!  By the time we finished constructing them, I had wanted students to draw some nice details to cut out and put inside, like dragons, knights, etc. but believe it or not, they complained about it!  (Which is weird because this particular group of students is OBSESSED with the medieval times...last year we did two dragon projects because they kept asking for them!)  So, needless to say, I'm a little unhappy with some of the craftsmanship on the details...of the few students who did add details, they cut a bubble around their objects, instead of cutting them out neatly on the line....sigh.

I did, however, like that they wanted to incorporate felt...that was something I hadn't thought of.  So, here they are, our finished cardboard castles.  You can check out the rest on our Artsonia gallery!

This one had some of my favorite outside decorations...these cool, "magical" mushrooms!

This student didn't exactly follow directions for the tower roofs, but I couldn't knock him for his creativity...it's still a pretty cool looking castle.

This castle was done by a student who is very precise in his artwork.  He fought me up and down to not put any details on his castle so it wouldn't mess up his brick.  He also refused to paint the inside of the castle, which I wasn't too found of.  (Not fond of the use of tape either...)  This student was really creative with his drawbridge...it works to go up and down on it's own!

Another creative roof...the castle's flag!

If I ever do this project again, we'll definitely use the sponge-texture for the bricks instead of painting the brick lines.  It was so much faster.  I also think I'll definitely make them paint the inside, at least a solid black color.  Even though we covered the boxes with gesso, you can still see some of the cereal box print through the primer which I find distracting.

In Progress: 3rd Grade Cardboard Castle Sculptures

My third graders are doing simple machines in science class, which matches up perfectly with the next unit I wanted to do with them!  I've been wanting to build castles with a grade, so I figured this would be the perfect class to do it with...we could incorporate simple machines in our draw bridge!  

I've seen numerous examples of these floating around Pinterest, but most of them use just cardboard tubes of different sizes to create a princess-like castle.  I did a little research on castles (because let's be honest...I know very little about castles), and I used various sources from pppst.com to create a handout (I'll have to attach that tomorrow...I left my hard drive at school).

On the first day of the project, students partnered up and read about the parts of a castle and then tried to match the name of each part to its picture on the back of the handout.  

It has taken us approximately two days to put these castles together so far.  From here, we will gesso the cardboard (the shiny, printed side of the cereal boxes, not the brown side) and add the texture to the walls.  Students will be able to paint medieval scenes on the inside of their walls and they will have to brainstorm how to make their drawbridge work.  Finally, we'll make the cones to put on the tops of their towers.

This is my castle that I made.  I used regular cardboard and paper towel tubes.  I found that it was VERY difficult to cut the cardboard using my own scissors and I knew the students wouldn't be able to cut it with their scissors, so I had them all bring in cereal boxes.

 Each student used one large cereal box to make their castle walls.  We cut out the front and back of each box, and then cut those in half.  Students cut out the little "teeth" on their walls, and then folded the sides to create a little flap to make it easier to hot glue them to the cardboard.  Once glued, they had to trim down their towers if they were too tall to make them a little more proportionate.

 This is the first time I've let 3rd graders use hot glue guns and it was VERY successful!  Some of them were leery of using the glue guns, so I helped them, but everyone else did quite well!  We had no burned fingers!  Once a student finished constructing his or her castle, they helped others catch up...it was great watching their teamwork today!

My cart of castles!  Class B still needs one more period to finish constructing all of their castles.

I just BARELY had enough paper towel tubes to do this project...I've been stock piling them for a while and I have one grandparent who has faithfully sent me two garbage bags full of them since the beginning of the year.  Now, I just need a project to deplete the toilet paper tubes that I have left...