cloud city.

This week the 3rd graders are using an illustration by Dinara Mirtalipova to learn about line and 3d space in art. They are familiar with Dinara's work because they did a project inspired by another illustration of hers last year.

Dinara's work is full of whimsy. I like how she flattens and stylizes her shapes, but through overlapping and size changes, she maintains a sense of recognizable space. I like sharing her work with my students because of the fictional touches she adds to many of her images.

I started the lesson by having students read our focus of the day aloud- today I am.., So that I can..., and I'll know I've got it when... We then looked at the image from last year to review Dinara's work and how she creates 3d space, and then we looked at our focus image for this lesson.

 

3rd grade focuses on the understanding and creation of 3d space, so I had students identify what parts represented the foreground, middleground, and background. We discussed how Dinara used size change, overlapping, detail, and color to separate the different layers. We also looked around the room for other examples of 3d space in outdoor scenes. 

Students used their small dry erase boards to practice drawing a person from behind, and to lay out their own fictional cityscapes. They referred to these as they drew out their final compositions on brown paper. I asked that the students only use color on the main character and ladder and that everything else was drawn in white. Students were required to create 3 different layers through color, size change, and having less detail in the background. Students made individual choices about their main character, cloud drawing, and background elements.

a marz landing.

Marz Jr. that is:)

Marz Jr. is a New York based artist who focuses on cityscapes, comic books, and movies as the subjects for his artwork. The way he handles his subject matter was a perfect fit for the 4th graders' continued work with line and contrast.

Before starting the project we reviewed how we made contrast and emphasis in the Petra Borner inspired project from last week. I pointed out that with that project we focused more on imagination and this week we would focus more on observation. Students read aloud from my Standards board- today I am..., so that I can..., and I'll know I've got it when...

Then I shared Marz Jr.'s work with them.
The kids loved looking at his work, especially the Star Wars imagery. What they noticed right away about most of his work was that the emphasized objects stood out because they were lighter in color value than everything else in the image.

For our lesson, we focused on his cityscapes. We talked about what makes a cityscape a cityscape and then looked at numerous buildings from San Diego. As we looked at these, I showed students how to make building shapes look 3d with diagonal or curved lines.

Students followed along using their dry erase boards to do sketches on. This was the first time we tried these out to practice, and I think they worked really well. I'm looking forward to using these for brainstorming and sketching throughout the year.

After practicing, students were expected to draw at least 3 buildings in their final project. At least 2 of them needed to be from our San Diego examples. They could invent or borrow buildings from other places for other buildings if they wanted to.

Students drew their buildings on a colored square and then drew their final building on a white piece of paper that was cut and glued in place to create the focal point of their drawing.

Thanks also goes to Patty at Deep Space Sparkle for doing a project based on Marz Jr.'s work last year. The step by step I used is how she broke it down. I just added the hometown San Diego focus to the project:)

night at the wonka factory.

That was one of my first thoughts after viewing this piece by Chicago based illustrator and designer Joe Van Wetering. 

Joe has done a number of designs for Threadless clothing. I, in fact, bought one of his designs for my wife a couple years ago. I think he has an interesting color sensibility and I like the energy that comes across in his work.

Looking through Joe's website with my 3rd graders, we discovered that he creates movement in his designs in very simple yet effective ways. He often uses simple line patterns and line directions to do it. He also does it with the types of shapes he groups together in his designs. We also noticed how he uses tints of colors to add variety to his compositions and color palette.

The night time smog scene and the waterfall design are prime examples of all these elements. One of the 3rd grade standards is to be able to identify and create movement in art. I thought a project based on one of Joe's images would be an entertaining exploration of this element. 

1. students drew out their evening cityscape at the bottom. It must have 2 layers and use overlapping and value change to distinguish the 2 layers. They have been working with these concepts on a number of projects this year.

2. students draw out their smoke cloud/s that show motion through shape design. They start by drawing the main shape and then break it into smaller wave shapes inside. They may use any of the warm or cool colors for the smoke shapes. They must make 3 shapes tints of colors.

High success rate project and a minimal cleanup project for me at the end of their 4 week rotation that dealt a lot with mixed media and collage elements. It will be nice to have a clean floor on Monday.