Klimt Trees

Fourth graders read the book "Klimt and his Cat" and looked at the artwork of Gustav Klimt. They discovered that he makes his trees with interesting spiral branches.



First we talked about what a landscape is and then we painted our own landscapes using the cool color family (blue, green and purple) for the land and the warm color family (red, yellow, and orange) for the sky.  We used a loose watercolor technique which involved blending colors and bending our paper to cause the colors to drip.

Next, we practiced our brush technique for getting smooth edges as we painted our trees.  Finally, it was time for embellishments.  We used gold paint and jewels to embellish our Klimt trees.  Klimt is well known for his use of gold paint!

Learning Goals: I can...
- Create a tree in the style of Klimt
- Tell about Klimt
- Blend analogous (neighbor) colors using watercolor paint
- Paint smooth spiraling lines

Adobe Chalk Landscapes

Fourth graders created these colorful glue and chalk landscapes.  We learned about the Hopi Native Americans through a PowerPoint and by reading some of this awesome book: "If you lived with the Hopi." 

The current elementary curriculum in our schools seems to focus on Native Americans in the Michigan area so kids usually do not know about some of the other famous tribes!  This was a great chance to get a feel for how other tribes are different. Again, I can't say enough good things about this book!

Chalk is not a medium (material) that we use regularly so this was a project that involved new experiences for many students.  Before we started each day we reviewed my two art rules for good craftsmanship using chalk: 

1. Don't blow the chalk (we avoided a lot of coughing and mess). 

2. No chalk piles (I explain that these are created when students press too hard and that when they happen students should stop immediately and rub the pile into the paper.  This helps prevent colors from falling all over into unwanted places).

We blended using our fingers and erased out with kneadable erasers.  Kneadable erasers were a new thing for most of the kids. I got lots of questions about where these could be bought.  Hobby Lobby is a great place to get an interesting stocking stuffer like this if you are a parent of one of these kids! 

 We also talked about analogous colors (colors that are alongside each other on the color wheel, neighbors) and how well they blend together.

Learning Goals: I can...

- Tell about the Hopi and their Adobe houses

- Pencil lightly

- Draw with glue

- List the 2 chalk rules

- Use chalk to blend colors

- Explain analogous colors

Tractor Landscapes

Fifth graders learned about the art elements of space, color, form and shape during our tractor project.   At Forest Grove we used tractors as our subject matter and at Bauer we drew pickup trucks!

Learning Goal: The learner will be able to...
- explain that a landscape is a picture of landforms
- explain how distance affects perceived color and size
- explain the distance between form and shape

We began our projects by creating landscapes.  We talked about how to show distance by drawing large hills in the front (foreground) and smaller hills in the background.  We also talked about how the hills are overlapping.  Both size and overlap help to create the illusion of space and distance.  Next, students were given yellow and blue tempera paint to create hills.  We talked about how hills look blueish in the distance.  Students began by mixing paint for a yellow-green hill and ended with a blue-green hill.

Next, we talked about the difference between a shape (2D enclosed space) and a form (3D version of a shape).  We started by drawing our tractors in 2D and then changed them into 3D drawings by changing the angle so that the viewer can see the thickness (third dimension) of the truck.

Students were encouraged to decorate their tractors in their own unique way!

Finally we cut out our tractors and glued them into the landscapes.  We made our barns small so that they looked like they were off in the distance.  We finished up by using watercolor paint to create sunsets with warm colors.

Cool Landscape

Kindergarteners have been learning about the color wheel.  For this project we looked at the cool color family and created our cool landscapes using only the cool colors, purple, blue and green.  We noticed that all of the cool colors are on one side of the color wheel!  The warm colors from last time were on the opposite side.  We also learned that a landscape is always a picture of land!

Learning Goal: I can pick out the cool colors.   We began by linking cool colors to parts of a landscape that are actually cool to the touch.  Green grass can cool your feet off on a hot summer day.  Blue water is great to swim in if you want to cool off!  We also learned about how mountains are cooler as you walk higher towards the snowcaps!