My TpT Store: 3-2-1 Oil Pastels--A How To Video & Graphic Organizer

Hey friends and enemies!

I've been creating some resources that students can use to learn the basics of art supplies. So many times I do the same demos over and over and it would be nice to be able to quickly refer students to a demo in case they missed it or need additional info. 

In a previous post, I explained how my friend Jen pointed me down the road to using the 3-2-1 format for my videos. Once I started thinking of organizing my demos this way, I haven't been able to stop!

Oil pastels are near and dear to my heart. I use them in my own scratch art-inspired work and love how easy they are to use and the bright colors!

3-2-1 Oil Pastels Video and Graphic Organizer

With this resource students will learn: 

• What are oil pastels?
• Three ways to use this art material
• Two cool techniques
• One thing to keep in mind
  
  

The link to the video on youtube.

The handout on my Teachers Pay Teachers Store.

If you use these resources, leave a comment below! I love to hear that people are enjoying my resources. 

Enjoy!

Picasso's Hands With Bouquet With KINDERS

 I've been having a blast with the elementary students at the school I am working at temporarily. I've been having the Kinders explore art materials a bit and this week I thought they'd enjoy doing a project I originally posted back in 2013 as we continued our discussion about line and shape. This is not my idea, as you can read in the original post, but it's a great one that I'm sure I'll be doing again and again in the coming years!

The only thing I changed this time was to have the students draw all of their flowers first, then add the stems, and when they were done they could line up and they could make their hand print at the back of the room at a table by the sink (and near the drying rack). Other times I'd have them print their hand first and then add the flowers.

Again, it helps if you have a bucket or two of water ready for them to rinse their hands in and paper towels ready to go right near the sink (already ripped to single-serve sizes). This was a wonderful project that helped them explore some of the elements of art (shape, line, color) and explore a new material and technique or two. They have some really good observations and insight about Pablo Picasso's work and, it's a FUN project--I mean, who doesn't love to have their hand painted by the art teacher!!??

VOCAB: Pablo Picasso, bouquet, shape (circle, oval), line, color, drawing

CROSS-CURRICULAR CONNECTION: Science (flowers (petals, stems), spring), kindness/giving

MATERIALS: 12" x 18" white paper, oil pastels, black tempera paint, paint brush

Our inspiration!

ENJOY!

Grade 6 Tasty Thiebaud Cakes

I have already explained that the school I was subbing for last year was celebrating its 40th birthday. If you haven't checked them out already, look at these great 3D cakes sculptures my fifth graders completed for the festivities.

I also wanted a little something for the background of the birthday display so I had this nice little Wayne Thiebaud-inspired drawing project for my sixth graders to work on as they completed their other work (I had actually left this as a sub plan one day when I was out, but that's another post for another day).

These were a fun break for them and they had a great time decorating the cakes. As you can see below, I put them in the background of the birthday display and they really looked cute. This is a nice project to talk about unity and repetition as well as color theory (and of course Modern and POP art).

I have done this project before with elementary school students and they have fun with it too. The directions for this project are here. The sixth graders used oil pastels to decorate their cakes, but construction paper crayons are a less-messy alternative.

Have fun creating your yummy cakes! ENJOY!

Grade 5 Tooled Metal Lines and Patterns

My fifth grade students loved this great little project. We talked about different types of lines (dotted, straight, curved, dashed, etc.) and pattern. I gave the students four little 3 1/2" square pieces of white paper and they could create little compositions that included line and pattern.

Once they were done, they selected one of their compositions to tool into metal. This is a very neat media to work with and this relief technique is called repoussé which is French for "to push back." You can get the tooling foil online at Dick Blick. It is quite reasonably priced--I was able to get enough 3 1/2" and 4" squares for multiple classes from one roll with some left over.  The foil is easy to cut and use (I use a box cutter but you can use scissors too). To make the marks, I have students use a dull pencil on the metal while it is on a piece of felt that has been folded in half to make a double-thickness. Sometimes students need to go over their lines twice to make a nice, deep mark, but otherwise students have a high rate of success with this media. 

Once the metal portion of the project was done, I gave each student an 8" x 10" piece of mat board and they could take a pencil and extend the patterns and lines beyond the metal square over the surface of the mat board. They then colored the lines and patterns on the mat board with oil pastels. Once done, we hot glued the metal squares to the mat board. 

I think they came out beautiful!

Students could place the tooled metal square wherever they liked
on the mat board (in the center, off to the side, etc.). They then used
color, line and pattern to fill up the space.

The students were VERY engaged during this project and loved the results. The photos don't do them justice--they are beautiful and colorful. ENJOY!

The partially completed bulletin board that shows the variety of the work.
BEAUTIFUL!

When they were done, I had them affix all four of their design squares (the preliminary sketches they did on paper) to a worksheet and fill out a self-assessment on the back.

P.S. For additional tooled metal projects, check out my Mexican Folk Art Ornaments and Mexican Folk Art Trinket Boxes. 

Mmmmmmm....Tasty Thiebaud Cakes!

I've had this project on the agenda for a couple of years since I saw it at my first NH Art Educator's Association State Conference. This project is from the Art History-inspired Lesson Planning Session I took with Claire Provencher, who is this year's President of the NHAEA.

Some of the tasty cakes in progress. This also shows the handout
I gave each student to make sure they knew all the elements I was expecting:
cake, cake stand, shadow on table.

I had originally planned one one-hour class for this project, but even my speediest student needed the project to continue into another session, so if you are limited on time, you can reduce the number of cakes from 9-ish to 5-ish, to make the project more manageable.

I started class by showing the students a slideshow about Wayne Thiebaud I had found online and I gave each table a handout which had an image of Thiebaud's cakes for reference as well as an example of the elements I was expecting them to have on their papers: cake made from construction paper, cake stand that had been traced on the background paper, then colored, and the shadow from the cake stand that had also been traced on the background paper and colored in.

I also implemented my "AT LEAST TWO COLORS" rule for every piece of this project. Students have to use at least two colors in their cakes, on the cake stand and on the shadows that fall onto the table. Oh, and no black in the shadows. This gets the children thinking about using richer color choices that are more natural and slows them down a bit. I really didn't want them to spend two minutes decorating cakes and throw some black shadows everywhere and call it a day.

I had the children use a combination of crayons (the regular kind) and craypas or oil pastels to decorated their cakes (Claire suggested using construction paper crayons originally, but I didn't have those). The children really enjoyed decorating their cakes, and I was pleasantly surprised by all of the different kinds of cakes they were able to create! I also showed some of the students how to make a half cake and a cake with a slice taken out of it.

Enjoy these tasty cakes!

Tasty Thiebaud Cakes

Supplies Needed:

• One 9"x12" piece of neutral-colored construction paper for a background (cream, white, light blue)
• About ten 3"x 4 1/2" pieces of construction paper, various colors
• Cake template cut from card stock
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Oil Pastels
• Crayons
• Glue stick
• Cake stand template cut from card stock, optional, children could just freehand it

Directions:

1. Trace and cut the cakes from the small pieces of construction paper. If you stack a couple pieces of construction paper, you can cut a couple cakes at once. Don't try to cut all 10 cakes at once with child scissors--your cakes will be messed up!

2. Decorate your cakes with the crayons and oil pastels. Add glazes, sprinkles, nuts, fruit, stripes, polka dots, hearts, etc. The sky's the limit! Use at least two colors on each cake to make them interesting. If you decide to add shadows to your cakes, make sure all of your shadows are going the same way (in the same direction). You can also make some of your cakes missing a slice or even make a half cake just like Thiebaud would do.

3. Once all of your cakes are done, glue them to the background paper.

4. Draw the cake stands below each of your cakes. I suggest drawing all the cake stands at once since they will probably overlap and you'll need to make some decision about which ones are on front and which are behind and that is much easier to do in the pencil phase.

5. Color in the cake stands and add shadows going in the same direction they appear on your cakes.

6. Add shadows from the cake stands onto the table. Again, make sure the shadows are going the same direction as all of your other shadows.

Mmmm-mmmmm!