Paul Klee Fish

Paul Klee was a very interesting artist who ended up using lots of geometric and organic shapes in his artwork. He valued the "primitive" art of children, and the whimsical shapes and designs in which they created. I think that is what I value most about my childrens' artwork, too!

For this project, we used 12x12 white paper and folded it 3 times to make an invisible set of lines on our papers. On this, the kids wrote their names in crayons OVER and OVER and OVER. Then they chose one color of watercolor paint to paint on top.

We then made some funky fish out of paper, crayons, marker, and (sequins if finished early for extra pizzazz!)

I was so happy to see that so many of my kids didn't take the background literally and used different colors other than blue (for the "water")! Each child is SO proud of their work because not only are they unique, they're personalized!

folk art houses

I saw these cool paintings on Etsy and thought they were so adorable, so I did this lesson on Folk Art with my fifth graders. If I had it to do over again, I'd do it maybe with third grade to teach paintbrush control...my fifth graders got a tad bored with it and most of my boys thought their projects turned out "girly". I, of course, LOVE THEM!

We used orange and red construction paper to start, then used pencil to draw our basic layout. The kids used tempera paints mixed with a touch of white so they would stand out on the colored construction paper. For the patterns on the top we used bright acrylic colors. Lastly, we used liquid ink and paintbrushes to outline everything!

The Starry Nights of Summer

I haven't done a Van Gogh lesson in a couple of years. The last lesson I did the kids were so frustrated with the "impressionistic style"--dashes, dashes everywhere-- that I decided to quit fighting with them and I took some time away and taught Monet instead. We watched "Getting to Know theWorld's Greatest Artists" (I'm not big on videos, but this one crams in every detail about his life in 23 minutes!) and then revisted Starry Night.

We then created our own version of the Starry Night, one with which our kiddos could relate--a starry night over the Gulf of Mexico. We used tempera paint on black paper and I just ADORE the way they all (all 126 of them!) came out. I usually don't say that about many projects, but I love the whimsy of each of these paintings. I hope the kids are as proud of them as I am!

untitled project

I was "pinning" the other day and came across this gorgeous, fluid watercolor painting. For the life of me, I couldn't find the source of it, I just kept being re-routed to tumblr.com. I thought it was amazingly beautiful!

I decided to make something similar with my third graders. This project took a day to paint the background with free-form shapes and brilliant colors, then left to dry. On day 2, we only took 10-15 minutes to "blow" the ink into spider-y stems across our papers. (Yes, I used water-soluble liquid black ink, not paint). I just ADORE how these came out. Each so beautiful and unique!

And no, I couldn't come up with a clever or witty title for these paintings. We used this as a springboard to "naming your painting" in class, too. The students loved coming up with names for their own paintings!