big old art room

Train - Cancelled

It's 6:33 AM, the Mooroolbark train has been cancelled, and the hot air baloons are out.

Observational Drawing - Grade 1/2

For our first Art lesson together the Grade 1/2’s and I made two kinds of drawings:

drawings from our minds

and

drawings from our eyes.

Students were asked to complete four drawings – an animal, a person, a building and a leaf. These were images that the students were carrying around with them in their minds.

Students were then given the challenge of switching off their busy minds and having a go of drawing another leaf. This time they were given an actual leaf and asked to draw “only what they see, not what they know is there.”

This sounds easier than it actually is, yet students rose to the challenge and faithfully tried to record ‘only what they could see, not what they knew was there.

Drawings from our minds                                 Drawings from our eyes   

 

Smooshy Colour Wheels - Prep

For our first lesson on colour the Preps and I looked at the primary or superhero colours (red, yellow, and blue). We call them the superhero colours because these colours help make all the other colours. To see what colours we could make when mixing the primary colours together we made smooshy colour wheels.

Each student put a stripe of yellow, a stripe of blue, and a stripe of red onto their page. They then put a piece of cling wrap over the top and smoooshed the paint round and around with their fingers.

It was lots of fun, a little bit messy and very colourful.

   

Warm & Cool Flowers - Grade 1/2

Grade 1 & 2 have been learning all about colour and over the past few weeks this focus turned to warm and cool colours. Students were asked to create a drawing with a warm foreground and a cool background (or vice versa). As we discovered, some colours, like green, can be both warm and cool.

In sketching the flowers students had an opportunity to apply the observational drawing technique that we discussed in our first week of art together. As demonstrated here the students did a wonderful job of focusing on the shapes they could see with their eyes, not the ones they could see in their minds.

For inspiration we looked at some of Georgia O’keeffe’s famous flower paintings. After  discussing her work I informed students that Georgia O’keefe’s flower paintings were very large, sometimes 9 or 10 feet wide.  I then asked the question:

“Why would she want to paint something as small and delicate as a flower so large?”

 
It was wonderful to hear the students carefully considered responses. In general the classes agreed that Ms. O’keeffe’s intention was to make people stop and look, to notice the details and not miss the beauty and grace of a humble flower.

 

Made you look!

This lesson was inspired by this post from the wonderful blog artlessonsforkids.wordpress.com

Colour Blots - Grade 1/2

As part of our focus on colour, the Grade 1/2’s began by looking at primary or Superhero colours (red, blue and yellow). We call them the Superhero Colours because they have ‘super powers’. These super heroes can mix together to make the secondary colours (orange, purple, green and brown) and help make every other colour in the world.

The students began by placing two primary colours in the middle of their page, folding the paper over and then squisshhing them together. When they opened them up, each student found that a new colour had been made, a secondary colour.

Students were then given the freedom to experiment with other colour combinations across their page. Many students found that the shapes reminded them of different things such as, butterflies, insects and faces.

What can you see?

It was a wonderful way to introduce paint into the classroom and heaps of fun too.



This lesson was inspired by a lesson from the wonderful blog artlessonsforkids.wordpress.com