Fall Projects

Back from the holiday and full steam ahead! And a full moon:)

The weather is not feeling like fall yet but I wanted to start creating artwork that would be ready to put up for display for when it does. I began with first grade. Owls always make me think of fall (I am not sure why) so I had them begin with the background. Van Gogh is a favorite of my students(His artwork was the winner of our March Madness bracket last year which I will talk about again later). I showed them examples of his work and discussed his style where he created short dash marks with his brush and focused on Starry Night. I gave out light blue paper and oil pastels and had them create their own night sky.

The next day, I gave them model magic and showed them step by step how to create the owl shape and how to add in texture as well. (I LOVE my ladybug doc camera- am I alone on that??)
Then, they were put up to let dry.

The third day, it was time to put it altogether. They added color to their owl with marker (one reason I LOVE model magic too, especially for little ones.) They cut a tree shape out of brown construction paper and leaves out of two different values of green. We also discussed  how line can create implied texture so they added lines onto the tree. When they had the owl and their skies complete, they turned them both into me and I hot glued the owl on. There was a lot going on with this project but they all did a great job and it hit all of the Elements of Art. It will definitely be marked done as one of my favorites. I love a project where every student is really successful.

Another Fall related project that we started this week with second grade were these Positive and Negative Pumpkins. I have done projects like this before but I added to it this time because my students also really like zentangles. I spent the first day going over positive and negative space as well as what symmetry was. I gave out 12x18 balck paper and 9x12 orange paper. They drew out half the pumpkin shape in pencil and one eye, half the nose, and half the mouth.

The second day, we discussed line and showed them several examples of lines and zentangles. They used black on the orange paper and white or orange on the black paper.

Kind of spooky but very cool and another one where everyone was very successful! :)

I hope these have helped you get into that fall/autumn mood and I will post more soon!