1st Grade: Winter Landscapes with Depth

My 1st graders finished up these awesome winter landscapes right before we left for the winter break.  I really like introducing the concept of depth to 1st grade because I think they can actually understand it and work with it in simpler forms.  In the past, I've done pumpkin landscapes with depth and a Northern Lights landscape, so I decided to combine the two for this year's depth landscape!

This project took two days and about 10 minutes in a third class to complete.  On the first day, I showed students a video about how the Northern Lights are created (of which this fits really well into their Common Core Listening & Learning strand about Astronomy!).  We then got down to work drawing our landscape out.

Students used black oil pastel on black paper.  I first asked them to draw a big snowman, just the body, towards the bottom edge of their paper, and then a horizon line behind it.  I posed the question, "If you wanted to draw a snowman in the background, how would you do it?"  Most of them understood that it had to be drawn smaller, but I showed them how to draw it smaller and farther up on their paper.  Again, I had them draw a horizon line behind that snowman.  Then, I asked, "What if you wanted to draw a snowman in between those two snowmen? In the middle-ground?" It was like a light-bulk turned on above their heads! 

We added the mountains next, and then used three colors to create the Northern lights in the sky.  This all happened on day 1.

On day 2, we talked about how we were going to color all the snow.  If snowmen are white, and the snow on the ground is white, I explained that they would have to do something a little different to the snow so they wouldn't blend together.  Luckily, there was snow on the ground outside the windows so we could look at how the shadows from the building look blue in the snow!

After the snow was colored, the mountains and the details on the snowmen were the last things left!

Summer Program: Keith Haring Murals

Once again this year, we worked on expanding the Keith Haring-style murals we did the last two years.  This summer was most likely the last summer that we will receive the grant to do the summer program, and we had three panels left in the hallways at the little gym, so we decided to do three murals instead of one!

Needless to say, we didn't quite finish, so I will post the the final, touched up murals once school starts.  I plan on taking the painters who pay more attention to details to finish it up.  We had a lot of great painters this summer, but they started to trickle out of attendance and I was left with, well, the over-eager painters who didn't necessarily pay attention to paint drips on the floor and such.  Either way, I think we accomplished quite a bit for tackling three panels at once!

On Day 1, I drew out a beach scene and we started painting with Chroma Acrylic Mural Paint.

Day 2 continued with the beach scene, and I also added a winter scene and of course a hiking scene...because you can't live at the base of the Adirondacks without making art with mountains! ;)

The other two murals, which can be seen on "Our Completed Murals", were flat color.  For the beach scene, we decided to get a little more fancy and added some cool color blending in the big wave as well as sponge texture for the sand.

I think the beach mural is by far my favorite one of the entire group!  This one just needs a few black lines touched up and the sand redone.  We had some drips and when the student repainted over them, she didn't sponge the sand on the same way as she did the first time.  :-/

Again, these ones just need some touch up on the black lines and then the top coat of non-glossy acrylic.

Kindergarten: 4 Seasons Project (Picture Heavy Post!)

Here is the plan for that Four Seasons project I am doing with the kinders, in conjunction with Monet.  As I said before, some teachers stepped up to the plate and read or will read a book about an artist during read-a-loud in class.  Two kinder teachers chose Monet.  When they came to me and asked who a good, easy artist might be to cover, I asked what they were learning in class.  Currently, they are working on the seasons and weather unit from the Core Knowledge listening strand curriculum.  Right away, I knew Monet would be a good artist for them to read about.  He loved to paint outside, he painted in all types of weather, seasons, and times of day.  

So, this project will span out over the course of 4 days.  The first two days will revolve around reviewing what trees look like in the four seasons, and painting a background for each tree.  We'll also paint a tree, without leaves, on each background.  This won't necessarily take up a whole lot of time each class, but I'm using the rest of class to really teach and push cleaning up with paint to the kinders.  They're really good at cleaning tables now, but now we need to work on cleaning brushes and paint palettes.  In fact, Phyl over at There's a Dragon in my Art Room just did a post about clean-up, and it's fantastic!  I already do some of what she suggests, but I may take a few other pointers from her!

Anyways, here is what the students will be doing on days 1 and 2:

Day 1 will be the winter and spring trees...I do the demo first on how I want them to paint the background, and then they do it.  We did both backgrounds first, and then went back in and painted the trees.  I did not give the demo on painting trees, because they should already know how to do those 'y' and 'v' trees we worked on in the cherry blossom unit.

Day 2 will be the summer and fall trees.  Backgrounds are pretty similar, but I'm going to have them add some textured clouds, I think, for the summer tree and instead of doing light blue and white in the fall sky, I'll have them do light blue and dark blue.

Now here's the fun part.  I've seen bubble wrap printing all over Pinterest.  This particular pin is what really inspired this project.  On day 3, I will set up stations around the room at the tables.  Each table will be a different season.  We will write the seasons on the back of each tree so students can take the correct tree to the correct station to add the leaves/snow.

Winter trees will have white snow...I'm going to change the shape of the bubble wrap for this one so it's not a circle but a rectangle so it looks more like snow and less like white leaves...

Spring trees will have green leaves and pink buds...

Summer trees will have green leaves...

And obviously fall!

When I made these prints, I used the block printing ink that I have.  I'm not entirely sure I'm happy with the results, especially with the green.  I may change it to regular tempera paint.

On the last day, day 4, I'll have the kiddos glue these all down onto black paper.  I think one class will glue them down in a straight line, winter to fall, and the other class will do a 2x2 setup.

Finished Winter Birch Trees

Here are some of the finished watercolor birch trees.  As I'm grading them, I'm doing some reflecting on this particular version of my project.

1. I need to do some more practice painting with the watered-down watercolor paint for painting snow.  I don't want to "baby" the students by giving them already watered down paint...I want them to learn how to do the technique themselves, therefore it appears I need to give them more practice to master the technique.

2. I need to get my classroom some watercolor pencils!  I figured out what it is that I don't like about the coloring...it's the crayons!  I think these would look so much better with some watercolor pencils instead.

3. I noticed quite a few more students being successful with the depth aspect in this project compared to the fall birch trees...hoorah!

4.  We need to work a little more on shadows from a light source...some of the shadows are on the wrong side of their trees...

P.S. DOES ANYONE KNOW WHERE I GET THE CODE TO EMBED MY ARTSONIA GALLERY ONTO MY BLOG?  I've seen other blogs with the little button that says "check us out on Artsonia" but I can't figure out how to add it to my own blog!

We'll do one more version of these come spring time...

 I hate to say it but these two boys are my star art students in 3rd grade...they have a really great grasp on how to use watercolor paint! 

I wish the artist on the left had used less birch tree lines and the artist on the right had used more birch tree lines!

Winter Birch Trees Continued...

All righty.  Here is the continuation of my previous post for winter birch trees.  This is what the students have been working on for the last class.

Once students paint the sky and the watered down shadows in the snow, we pull off the masking tape.  I think this is the one time that cheap masking tape is actually a good thing!  Less ripping of the artwork!

1. Rip off the masking tape.  I tell the students to pull the tape at an angle from the tree, not straight down the tree.

2. At the sinks, I put two or three paper plates with some black tempera, and paint scrapers.

3. We use the flat side of the paint scraper to add the birch tree lines.  Dip it just a little bit in the paint.

4.  Lay the scraper on the edge of the tree and pull it in one direction.  Do this on both sides of the tree.  

You can definitely see where I had more paint and less paint on my scraper.  You don't want to go overboard!

My first year of teaching, we did winter birch trees, and I can already see how much I've grown in how and what I teach.  We did birch trees on a separate piece of paper with sharpies, cut them out and glued them to our painting before adding the shadows.  I like the paint scraper technique I found much better!  Though, I did just realize, as I'm posting this, that I completely forgot about having the kids use the salt technique in their sky! :(