Welcome Parents!

Hello! Is this your first time visiting the art room blog? Did you find us from the Woodland Wildcat News today? I am happy you are here. Please take a look around and be sure to leave us a comment. WE LOVE COMMENTS! It lets us know that people enjoy seeing what we are working on. Feel free to ask questions!

Seascapes

One of the standards that we teach in the state of Georgia requires us to teach a Georgia artist to all students every year. It was different at first but now that we are in the 2nd year of our Georgia Performance Standards for Visual Arts I think I am beginning to really enjoy finding new artists to teach to my students!

In 3rd grade art we were beginning our unit on depth which includes foreground, middleground, background, and horizon line. I chose a Georgia artist whose work I really love! His name is Paul K. Hill and he lives and paints in Georgia. The last couple of years he has been doing a series of seascape paintings while traveling with a group of other artists. They are called the Ossabaw Artists' Collective and I think the work they are doing is very interesting.  My students were inspired by Hill's seascapes to create their own

Henri Rousseau Jungles!

My second grade art students had a great time learning about Henri Rousseau. We learned about his life and asked the question - "How do artists surroundigs effect their art work?"  What they thought at the beginning of the lesson was very different than the ideas we ended up with!  Rousseau never saw a jungle in real life. He lived as a customs inspector in France and didn't even start painting until he was 40 years old!  Rousseau used pictures and plants that he could find to help him get inspiration for his art.

How do we find our inspiration today? Well....I would say Pinterest right now since that is where the idea for this lesson came from. Technology can take us right to the jungle even without leaving our classroom. We used Google earth to travel from Atlanta, Georgia to Africa where we could explore more in depth what a jungle might look like.  We used photographs of animals and their habitats on our interactive white board and spent some time discovering what basic shapes we could use to draw our own animals.

When the initial drawings were finished students painted their animals using realistic colors. We went back in with crayon and tissue paper to create our animal habitats. Just like Rousseau we tried to have our art filled with jungle!

I was thrilled that the students had such great success drawing the different kinds of animals. There was no limitation to what they could choose and the variety was excellent. Using the basic shapes to begin our drawings helped my students feel confident that they could draw the animal realistically without every student having to make the same animal.  I love seeing them so proud of their work!

Want to add a little more technology fun to this lesson? Check out the National Gallery of Art and create your own exotic jungle online!

Picasso to Warhol

On Sunday, January 15 (Noon to 5 p.m.), pay what you wish all day at the High Museum of Art. Adult, children, seniors, and students may pay whatever they wish for admission during regular Museum hours. Go out and see the Picasso to Warhol show while you still can!

Dale Chihuly - 3rd Grade Sculptures

Fun! Fun! Fun! That is my take away from the Dale Chihuly sculpture lesson I just finished with my 3rd graders. They loved studying his work and using it as the inspiration for their own sculptures. We looked at Chihuly's work and after our initial discussion on the differences between form and shape we watched a video of Dale Chihuly making a piece of art from his Macchia series. It was great for the students to see first hand how a piece of blown glass art is made.



Students then planned their piece of sculpture using colors and spontaneous drawing the way Chihuly does.

When students were done planning they transferred their designs to white coffee filters using washable markers. Macchia means spotted or stained in Italian and that was the basis of the inspiration for Chihuly and my students. When their coffee filter designs were complete they used paint bottles to form their free form sculptures.

When they had their sculptures in the form they wanted we sprayed them with spray starch and left them to dry!

They were then mounted on some matt board scraps in order to be displayed.

I think they are stunning and my little artists are so proud of their work! Want a fun sponge activity using technology for your students? Go here!

First Grade Folk Art Lesson

There is nothing I enjoy more than painting with my students. I would paint all day every day if I didn't have such a rigorous curriculum to cover. I just finished a Folk Art lesson with my 1st graders. We studied the art of John "Cornbread" Anderson. Cornbread was born and raised right here in Georgia. Growing up on a 40 acre farm, he spent a lot of time exploring the fields and woods around him. He fondly remembers his yard full of guinea hens and the wash tub near the wood-burning stove where his Mother cooked all of their meals during his childhood. You can see his memories of his childhood reflected in his paintings today. Students were inspired by his subject matter and created paintings of their own. Look for their use of horizon line and how well they used shapes to create their animals.