Art

Happy holidays! I can’t believe it’s almost a new year! I’ve been enjoying this rain filled winter break and was reflecting on how sweet this school year has been thus far, so I decided to blog about it.

November

We started this month with an introduction to color. We reviewed the primary, cool, warm, the rainbow sequence as well as created a color wheel. Our first art project was a multi media piece of an Autumn forest. After watercoloring the background with cool colors for sky and earth, warm colors were used to create the treetops. Painting techniques such as dabbing paint to blend on canvas, versus brush strokes, which we used for background, were applied. The students used colored pencils and crayons for the tree trunks and for added detail.

Before Thanksgiving break, the students enjoyed creating collage art with recycled, painted paper. (*Painted paper is created throughout the year using leftover paint on painting days. The students help by freely painting over blank paper in this collective prep work to be used for future projects. I mean, why throw away perfectly good paint?) They made really incredible gratitude birds by cutting out shapes and parts needed to shape their bird from the painted paper that comes in many blended colors. The challenge was to have the colors they chose for their birds wings, body, tail, etc., contrast by using both cool and warm tones. I also had them add a word to their collage art for an added sweet expression: Thankful.

December

We couldn’t continue celebrating colors without making Art with liquid watercolors!! The hues these paints provide are so vibrant, yet soft. Bold yet smooth….one of my favorites to have the students work with! So by Elio’s (kindergartener) request, the students made incredible paintings of the most colorful owls. I first lead them through a step by step on how to draw the owl with pencil. Then they enthusiastically painted their owls to life by adding all their favorite colors. Once dried, they revisited with black sharpies to outline their pencil lines as well as add patterns and details to and around their magnificent owls.
Whenever we are working on performances with Rock, the art room becomes a part of the theatre production. In result, we have impromptu art classes in the Tile room. This is when we get really creative with the materials and supplies I can carry down! In this case, charcoal and paper had to do.
Masterpieces were created by the students with the messiest mediums around! Charcoal gets all over their hands, even faces, instantly! It’s so worth it, in my opinion. This was a two part art project. First day was used creating their polar bears by tracing their contour lines with charcoal but only using their fingertips. This technique gives the illusion of value and shadow just by smearing the lines and by creating different shades of grey as you move along. I helped cut them out so they would be ready for the next phase. The backgrounds were made the next day using ripped up, recycled paper for the snow covered earth and green, slender triangles for evergreen trees. They also used white chalk to add abstract limbs and trunks but also because it feels similar to charcoal. They glued their cut out polar bears unto their creative backgrounds as the focal point, and then lastly, used both ends of a bamboo skewer to dip in white paint to add falling snow with pointillism. These turned out beautifully!!

I hope everyone is having a beautiful and safe winter break. I look forward to the new year and creating with the kids again. Thank you for reading!