String Paintings

Kindergarten created these cool string paintings after looking at the art of Paul Klee.  Paul Klee was a painter who painted abstract paintings.  Students said his art reminded them of roads and maps!  We started with a long string. Each student practiced making shapes with the string and then moved on to make their own line designs. Some lines were looping, some spiraled and some connect back to themselves to create continuous lines.  

Next, students created glue lines next to their strings and gently pushed the string onto the glue while avoiding getting glue on their fingers!  Finally, we practiced painting with watercolor. We started with the lightest warm color and ended with the darkest to keep the water bowl from getting too dark too soon. We also were careful to wash our brushes before changing colors!

Learning Goal: I can...

- Create an abstract painting

- Wash my brush when switching colors

This lesson was inspired by this site!

Starry Night

Second graders learned about Vincent Van Gogh and his most famous work of art, “Starry Night.”  They used oil pastels to create the impressionist brushstrokes of this famous swirling night sky.  

Learning Goals: I Can...

• Use oil pastel to create impressionist marks
• Use line to show movement
• Use value to show form 

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.