Klimt Portraits: 3rd Grade

Third grade also looked at Klimt's work. We concentrated more on his use of patterns. In my example I used my cat (she's cuter than I am when she sleeps).

On the first day, students split a yellow paper into five sections. Each section was filled in with a different pattern. I encouraged students to mimic some of the interesting patterns Klimt used. During this class, I took a picture on my teacher iPad of the students "sleeping." I printed these out for the students to use later.

Students at one school used a patterned paper for the blanket. At my other school, students had to create a patterned blanket. Both methods worked well. I had to remind students to make the blankets LONG; otherwise, it looks like they have no legs!!

Here is what their artworks looked like after piecing them all together! I hope that this is a piece they keep for a long time - they all did so well!

Movement: 3rd Grade

This project was pretty cool, but probably too hard for the 3rd graders. It definitely needs to be modified.

Students showed a movement by cutting and gluing six steps of a movement drawn in the style of Keith Haring.

Here is my example (I didn't get any pictures of the student work!)

3rd Grade - Laurel Burch Cats

This is my all time favorite lesson, and not just because I am definitely a cat lady. This lesson always produces BEAUTIFUL results. I split it up into four days:

Day 1 - Introduce the artist - Laurel Burch! Students love her colorful cats.

This is the day I demonstrate how to draw the cat. The students draw along with me. Sometimes, I have papers with the different steps on them that I will put up on the board in case students fall behind.

Students also are to add a lot of patterns to their kitties!! They then trace their pencil lines with permanent marker.

Students may use CRAYON to color the kitties in. I emphasize that they need to color darkly in order for the crayon to show up later. Oil pastel would work to, but my students always end up smearing them all over the place!

**It is important to remind students not to color in their entire cat, JUST the patterns!

Day 2 -

This day I have students start on their frames. Many students are not quite done with the patterns on their cats, so I don't want to force them to paint yet. I tell students to pick a color of paper and make a frame/border using more patterns and a lot of colors! Students that are behind start on their frame after they finish color their cat.

Day 3 - TIME TO PAINT! I go through the first "rainbow" of watercolor with my students, then allow them to paint it on their own, continuing the pattern. Students can paint over the lines of their cats since we will cut them out later.

When students finish, they bring them to the drying rack and work some more on their frames (if they need to).

Day 4 - This day creates a TON of paper scraps. Students have three things to make or cut: a rug, a mouse, and their cat. I cut small rectangles of paper OR put the scrap paper box at the front of the room for students to use as rugs. I also cut small squares for mice. A lot of students don't know how to draw a mouse, so I put a step-by-step on the board for them.

Students glue down in this order:

1. Rug - towards the bottom of the paper
2. Cat - sitting on the rug
3. Mouse - at the cat's feet

My students love their final products and are always antsy to take them home!!

3rd Grade Shape Resist

This is another lesson I stole from my supervising teacher during student teaching. Basically, students traced shapes onto their large sheet of paper. Students were told to overlap all of the shapes and fill the page. Some shapes should even go off the page!

Next, students color in each section (not each shape) with a different colored crayon. This means spaces that overlap are a different color than the rest of the shape. Students were told not to use black.

When students are finished coloring in their shapes, they use black watercolor to paint over the top of the entire thing.

3rd Grade: Underwater Scratchboards

With the third grade, I did two scratchboard projects. The first one we used crayons on tagboard. Students were to press hard with the crayons and create vertical lines. I told students to use any color but black. After the vertical lines were finished, students used black to cover everything up. We used wooden, pointed sticks to scratch different types of lines into the black and the colorful under-coloring was revealed!!

That lesson lasted a week. It served as a warm up for a bigger, more exciting scratchboard lesson that lasted two weeks.

Day 1: Students color vertical lines in rainbow order on a piece of tagboard. Our tagboard was cut to the size of about half a sheet of paper. Like before, students were to press hard with the crayons. I listed rainbow order on the chalkboard and included pink. (25 minutes)

During a prep period, I painted black tempera mixed with hand soap over the top of the colored tagboard. It is very important that students remember to write their names. Once they are painted, they are indistinguishable!

Day 2: I displayed about 20 pictures of fish/underwater life. I handed out computer/free draw paper and had students draw ONE creature from each photo unless stated otherwise. I explained that they would use these drawings on their scratchboards. Students were told they would not have to use every fish/creature they drew, just the ones that they liked best. (50 minutes)

Day 3: I gave students scrap paper the same size as the scratchboard and told them to draw what they were going to put on their scratchboards. I stressed to have some big creatures, medium creatures, and small creatures. I showed my students an example (that I did myself!) to further explain what I meant. Students also were told to put a lot of patterns on their fish and other sea animals. (25 minutes).

Day 4: Finally, students were able to scratch their pictures!! I laid down newspaper, as this can get messy. Here are the results from two of my third grade classes!!

Beautiful, expressive results!!

Jim Dine: 3rd Grade Heart Art

This is another project that I took away from student teaching. The students looked at pictures of Jim Dine's hearts. They always think his hearts are really cool. I make a point of asking them beforehand if they know how to draw hearts and also if they think that they could have a job as an artist just by making hearts. They usually answer yes to the first one and then slowly lower their hands at the second one.

I walked through the stencil-process with the students step-by-step. The students fold the tag-board (or recipe files, in our case!) in half and then draw half of a heart on the fold. I walk around to make sure they have actually drawn it on the fold and also to check and see if their heart-half will result in something that resembles a heart. Some need the dip in the heart lowered.

I honestly think the stencils end up being the most interesting thing about this project! They're so beautiful! Perhaps I will come up with something for the students to do with the stencils...my mind is running already!

The students used the stencils to make these wonderful heart pictures! I apologize for them all being portrait rather than landscape, but it's late and a school night!

She decided they needed to be broken hearts!

 

This student varied the width of the heart.

I'm pretty sure it was on accident, but it looks so interesting!

So there you go! Not an original idea of mine, but this project is so cute! It's supposed to be an introductory lesson to another involving ceramics, but I'm not sure how the kilns here work. Hopefully, one of the more experienced art teachers can do a run-through with me so I can do the clay project with my students!

Block Letters and Graffiti (2nd & 3rd grade)

I used this as a filler project during my first week. I talked to students about graffiti, then demonstrated how to make block letters/graffiti. I must admit, I have no experience with graffiti (spraypainting OR drawing) so I did my research beforehand. I found this site to be very helpful.

I told the students just to start out by writing their name. I used the word "ART" as an example. I purposefully made my letters jumbled/not lay on the same "line."

I then demonstrated these three steps:

1. How to draw block letters
2. How to attach the letters to one another, add arrows, broken pieces, etc.
3. How to trace around the word

I left the background patterns up to the students. Some of the results were pretty awesome, so I'm going to share them here!

EDIT: Some of my students are having a hard time remembering all the steps when they come back to class to work on these. Let's face it, there is a lot to remember. So, this is what I've been reviewing at the beginning of every class (quickly). I number all of the steps in a different color. I use the same, corresponding color to demonstrate that step and leave it up for students to reference. It's much easier to say "you still need to do step 3," than to explain what they need to do over and over again. It also allows me to help more students.