Become An Art Master

Maumee Valley Country Day School

Become An Art Master: 5-8 grade

During this week, students learned about a few famous artists and recreated art work in the inspiration of these artist. The first artist was Vincent Van Gogh. The students picked their favorite Van Gogh image and recreated it using oil pastel. Students had to measure a wide border around the center square which became a frame for their art work. Students also learned about the texture and brush marks that Van Gogh used in his oil paintings. These (See Below) were the best recreations by my class of 5-6th graders.

 The Second Artist was Jackson Pollock. Students helped make a cardboard wall to act as a barrier to keep our splatter paint in the painting area. And wearing old painting clothes we got to work. Students experimented with different kinds of splatter and drip techniques. The end result was a poster size Splatter painting in the inspiration of Pollock. We even used some recycled brown paper and used the rest of the paint to create a group splatter-drip painting. This would lead into the next project...

 For this project students created frames made out of colored paper, glue and pastel. They then measured and cut up the group splatter painting to fit inside their handmade frames. 

 Carefully measured and framed...These completed projects turned out great! 

 Here is a project  from the "DaVinci Notebook day." Using the back side of an old cardboard jewelry box the students glued on colored tissue paper to add color and texture. Students then added a nature drawing that was drawn in their sketch books from our previous nature walk. We talked about DaVinci and his notebooks and how many artist keep a sketch book or journal to draw and write down ideas. These were nice little colored pencil drawings and were very easy to hang using the inside edge of the box!

 This project was using the inspiration of Greek pottery. Students had to come up with a story and then draw/paint this story out on the clay pot. Around the top of the pot students had to create a pattern similar to the Greek geometric patterns. The second part of the project was to create the story characters in 3-D, using model magic. This family of Lions were the main characters for a great story...

All About Scapes

 Maumee Valley Country Day School

All About Scapes Week

During this week, students have learned about the differences between landscapes and cityscapes. The first day, students picked their favorite building or cityscpape of Toledo, Ohio and recreated it using either color pencil, markers, or crayons.

 Here are a few of my students hard at work.

 After going on a nature walk every day and drawing sketches using their outside portable drawing boards, students picked from their favorite sketch. They were then prompted to draw their sketch at a larger size and paint it with water color. Here are a few examples of landscapes from around the school:

Students also learned about the different types of landscapes throughout Ohio. With the use of Ohio Landscapes Books they could visually see the difference of trees, farmland, swampland, grassland, hills and rivers..etc...throughout Ohio. Some students said these images were very different from what they normally see each day.

Continuing with the idea of cityscapes, we talked about Frank Lloyd Wright and his unique style of buildings. For this project students created their own style of buildings. A heavy card stock was used for the background, then their buildings were drawn on with a pencil. Students then took a glue bottle and went over each pencil mark with a line of glue. After the glue had dried, students had a choice to color their buildings with oil pastel and regular dry/chalk pastel.                                                                                 (As a reminder this is a 2 day project because the glue needs to dry over night.)

 Kinda looks like a Dr. Seuss town....