Fall Still-life With Glue and Pastels

Here are some pretty still-life creations my after school art class finished up this week. OK, I can use other, more "artsy" words like "dynamic" or "engaging" to describe these, but MAN, are they pretty, too! I've done this project before, and the students are always amazed at how the pieces come out (me too!). This group had students who are in first grade through fourth--so you can see it's pretty accessible to all with the right amount of scaffolding.

I made the mistake, this time, of using clear glue (gel and plain clear) since that's what other art teachers have said they used for this project with great success. I tried it because, in the past, I had found the regular  Elmer's glue can dry a bit cloudy. Anyway, I WAS NOT happy with the results. The clear glue soaked into the paper and ran off as the students were moving them to the drying space leaving drips and blops all offer the classroom and my car (a.k.a. the mobile art studio). It also soaked through the paper and glued the pieces to tables and the seats of my car...(big unhappy face for Mrs. Pettus) ;-)

So, if you do this project--which a HIGHLY suggest you try--use plain old Elmer's. It's fine for this project. So fun and magical (and "pretty")! Check out my previous post about this technique here.

ENJOY!

Fall Compositions With Elmer's & Pastels

Fall is my favorite season and I have been LOVING driving my hour-an-a-half drive up to my Grad School twice (sometimes three times) a week...I pop in a book on tape and enjoy the beautiful fall folliage that New Hampshire has to offer! Ahhhh!

The focus of my after school art class for my 1st-4th graders is "Fall Into Art"--fall-themed art activities...last week, we drew apple still lifes inspired by Cezanne, and this week we took advantage of the nice weather and beautiful fall displays outside the school that had been donated by the Amherst Garden Center in Amherst, NH. The Garden Center had flanked the entrance of the school with pumpkins and gourds, hay bales, scarecrows, and beautiful mums! I couldn't ignore all of the visual stimuli out there ready to draw!

We spent some time looking and touching the displays, then we sketched them. We moved inside and selected one the things from our sketches to "draw" on black paper with Elmer's glue. The students were VERY skeptical when I told them we'd be drawing with Elmer's and you should have seen the surprised looks when I did my demo and piped glue along the lines of my drawing!

I had seen this Elmer's glue/pastel combination online before but had never tried it. I think it would be great for winter snowmen as well...

Anyway, we let the Elmer's glue dry (they rode around for a week in the back of my minivan--the mobile art studio.

The next week, I showed the students how to color in the non-Elmer's areas--the negative space--with the chalk pastels, encouraging them to add highlights and shadows to make their pictures really "pop" and look more realistic. I suggested using my "use at least three colors in each section" rule...

The students were VERY pleased with this new "technique" and, at the end of class, we discussed some other compositions they could use this technique on. The fourth-graders were very specific with their questions about materials: where I purchased the materials, what they are called, how much they cost. They want to make sure the next time they go to Michael's Crafts Store they purchase the proper things so they can do this technique again--THAT (to me) is a sign of a successful art lesson--my students wanted to take something they learned in class and go with it.

Enjoy!

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! 

Tints Landscape With Charcoal

I love working one-on-one with students! It's just the break I need in my week. I get to focus on art and one person and really enjoy both!

Today, my 3rd grade private art student finished this beauty. I am so proud of her! I had originally seen this post called "Winter White Landscape Paintings" at the blog A Faithful Attempt and loved them! The landscapes are done in tints of blues (in tempera!) and then the details added with charcoal pencils. LOVE IT! Honestly, I didn't think of temperas as a serious art paint, but I am so glad we tried this. I have completed my own piece and have another in the works--they are pretty addicting to create!

So, enjoy my student's work and hop on over to A Faithful Attempt to see how her students did it--and try one for yourself! You'll be glad you did!

With this project, my student learned:

• Color that are mixed with white are called "tints" and there can be many tints of a color!
• How to select a composition to paint (visual interest, balance, value range, etc.)
• How to use opaque water-based paint (tempera) to paint a landscape in layers and in multiple steps that require planning
• How to add details and value to a piece using charcoal pencils and the different ways of applying them as well as grades of softness
• One point perspective (fence) and direction of light and its effects on the shadows in a composition

Giacometti-Inspired Dancing Figures

Just wanted to share the piece that my private art student did this week in our session about the figure based on Giacometti. This piece is reminiscent of his famous work "City Square," but since my student is a dancer, she chose to make four figures dancing on a stage. This added a lovely dimension to the work in that my student needed to think about how the figures were interacting with one another in the space.

After she was done, she added the shadows and then decided to add skirts to her figures like Degas' "Little Dancer." Wow, this little girl is one smart cookie! What a lovely connection.

Fabulous piece!

"Dancing Figures"

This piece is inspired by a lesson in a previous post. Click here, to see my post on the Giacometti Figure Study.

Foil Giacometti Figures

This week, I had my students create sculptures with foil similar to Giacometti. Foil is inexpensive and easy to mold (and pretty addicting when you get twisting and turning). I also wanted to give the children an opportunity to learn the proportions of the human figure and practice gesture drawing.

Look at those muscles!

We were also able to talk about 3D versus relief and then I introduced Giacometti's work. We had an interesting discussion about how his pieces LOOKED (skinny, stick-like, like a zombie, like they had been burned up like a match-stick) and how they made us FEEL (sad, not sad, scared, uncomfortable).

I saw that another blogger, mccann at Doodles & Noodles, added another dimension to this project by having the children include the shadows of their figures. I thought that was an interesting idea. Not only does it look great visually, but it is interesting to compare the original gesture drawing of the figure to the 3D sculpture and the contour of the shadow.

Giacometti Figure Study

Supplies Needed:

• A few sheets of 8 1/2" x 11" copy paper
• Pencil
• A manikin, if possible (I bought mine at IKEA for $5) and a friend to draw
• 3-4' section of aluminum foil (I buy mine at the Dollar Store)
• Hot glue gun and glue sticks
• Matte board or thick cardboard
• One 9" x 12" piece of black construction paper
• Stapler
• Scissors
• Glue stick
• Lamp (we used a flashlight but that moved too much)

Directions:

1. Warm up by drawing a few gesture drawings of the figure in different poses. I talked briefly about the shapes that make up the human figure and how to draw the figure step-by-step. As the students posed, I posed Manny, the manikin, into the same pose so we could talk about the parts of the body and how they were arranged in each pose. I pointed out how the parts of the body joined and how they bent. Many times, young students will add too many joints or make knees bend the wrong way (OUCH!). One of my students asked, "When did this become a science lesson?" And it's true, learning to draw from life forces us to study and learn the structure of objects and beings.

2. Choose a pose to use as inspiration for your sculpture. I gave each student a 3'-4' piece of foil. I demonstrated how to shape a figure from the foil. I suggest scrunching the foil lightly at first to get the overall shape of your figure down and then squishing the foil to be more compact once you have all of the parts figured out. I really encouraged the students to create the figure from the one piece of foil and not pull off bits of foil, make parts, and then try to join them into a figure. Once you have your figure, pose it in the way it should be, using your drawing as a guide.

3. Use the hot glue to tack the figure's feet to the matte board. 

4. Slip a piece of white copy paper under the foil figure's feet in the direction you want your shadow to fall. Place the entire sculpture in front of a lamp or bright light source so that a shadow comes from the foil figure and goes across the white copy paper. Trace the shadow onto the copy paper using pencil. 

5. Compare the contour of the shadow to the gesture drawing you originally made--how are they different? How are they the same?

The elements of the Giacometti Figure Study (clockwise from top):
Manny the manikin, the gesture sketch, the shadow tracing,
 and the completed foil figure.

6. Staple the white copy paper with the shadow on it to a piece of black construction paper. Using your pencil line as a guide, cut through both layers to create a shadow from the black paper. Remove the staples and glue the shadow to the matte board using a glue stick. Note: Make sure you glue your shadow down facing the proper way--some kids tried to glue their shadows on upside down! Also, make sure that you slip a bit of your shadow under the foil figure's feet--shadows start UNDER our feet.

And Yet ANOTHER Science Link: If you had the luxury of time and patience, you could trace your foil figure's shadow throughout the day (say three times?) and cut each shadow from a different color of construction paper and then layer them on the matte board to show the passage of time or how our shadows change as the sun's position changes...just sayin'. That would be pretty awesome! ENJOY!

"Running To A Friend By The Sea"