4th Grade Texture Printed Cityscapes!

This lesson is vintage...my mother, Judy Bowerman,  taught this lesson and made the printing blocks over 25 years ago! She took a bunch of random rectangle wooden blocks and glued textured wall paper to them with wood glue.  They have lasted this long!!! And now, the texture from the wall paper is no longer visible. The blocks print the texture of layer tempera! But, they still create a stunning project.  This is one of those that EVERY student has a high level of success.  The best part of this project... easy clean up!  Just let the blocks dry! No washing!

Students move tablet to table to change colors.  I have a set of blocks for each table. 

Week two, I cut up different sizes of cardboard and chip board, whatever is available to print the windows, doors, details.  And even a building that never existed before! Students LOVE this lesson and they all turn out great! I hope you try it!

1st Grade - Cityscapes AND Seascapes!

I love teaching young ones to notice the details of the world.  Pointing out the differences within the landscape of our city, state and all over the world opens up our students minds to notice the details. Both these two projects include an element of printmaking.  The city, we used cardboard and black paint to print a city and the seascape, we folded our paper to print the reflection of our boats.  Both of these projects I found on Pinterest, and have adapted to my classroom.  Enjoy!

3rd Grade - Ton Schulten Cityscapes

Ton Schulten is one of my all time favorite artists! I discovered him years ago when I found a calendar full of his paintings when visiting the Toledo Museum of Art.  I was hooked!  I love his amazing colors and abstract style.  I created a Prezi of his landscape and cityscapes to share with my classes, (Ton Schulten Prezi).  I find it very interesting how he adds lots of vertical lines to his landscapes, a composition usually created with more horizontal lines.

This lesson was a COLOR VALUE lesson.  Students used pre-mixed colors and various TINTS to paint in city buildings.  The students mixed their own tints of blue for the sky portion.

The last step, we used India Ink to outline and decorate our city buildings. This was a great lesson for every student.  It was hard to chose which ones to photography!  They will look great later in a group hanging in our hallways!

3rd Grade - James Rizzi Art Folders!

Who doesn't love James Rizzi??? His artwork is always a favorite of my students! We look at his cityscapes closely, noticing the perspective and layers of spaces he creates. While most items are created flat, the near and far element is definitely there! Here are a few samples of Rizzi's cityscapes  I use with my 3rd graders...

When I start the lesson with students, we are looking to create foreground, middleground and background.  We start by drawing a line a little lower than the middle to create the background first... the silly buildings with personality!  After the buildings are in place, they are able to decide how to finish the foreground and middleground.  Street with cars, subway, park with playground, sidewalks, river with boats... or anything they come up with!

5th Grade - Fantasy Castles

These Fantasy Castles are inspired by the Disney illustrator Mary Blair 

AND Lisa Congdon, a current illustrator/artist. 

Mary Blair

Lisa Congdon

I completely love any kind of simple shapes in bright colors!  And when I see these ladies art works, I want to jump inside them!  If you go to Disney... you can! It's a Small World is full of Mary Blair's great works from the 50's! I have never been... but hear it is wonderful!  Here are our versions of fantasy castles inspired by these inspiring artists...

 We started with drawing our castles with white Twistables. We used straight edges and circles for a few details, but the rest by hand.

Next we painted, with warm and cool colors. I like to paint this way... 3 tables of warm, three tables of cool... all paintbrushes are cleaned on painting mats, NO WATER! I am a painter, I never clean brushes as I paint, only at the end.  I know everyone has a different system, this one works great for me!  Students can move from table to table when needed.

 Last step, some paintings needed a little more definition, so I threw the oil pastels on the table!  Some students used them a lot, a little or not at all.  I let them decide... a few I highly encourage some cleaning up some confusing areas by outlining the intended shape. They are all very unique!