First Grade Colorful Fish

I love these colorful painted fish created by my first grade students.  We read the book Fish Eyes by Lois Ehlert.  There are a lot of great fish inspiration in it and the kids love to read it.  To get started I made some drawing pages to help them. There were ideas for body shapes, fins and other fish details.  Students made sketches in pencil first and then black tempera paint on large paper.  We talked about the differences in drawing their fish in pencil and then using a brush.  The next class the kids used colorful tempera to fill in the fish and add any background details.  The following class the background was painted using liquid watercolors.  I love how colorful they are and how creative student were when drawing their fish.  It was also a great project for the kids to use tempera and watercolor paints.  Here are some of the finished pieces.  If you would like to see them all you can visit our online gallery here:  http://www.artsonia.com/museum/gallery.asp?project=1131832

Second Grade Self-Portraits and Chatterpix Kids

My second grade students just finished their self-portraits.  After looking at a variety of portraits and sketching practice students were asked to create a self-portrait that communicates personal interests. They were also asked to choose what painting material they wanted to use.  We spent a class period practicing with both mediums and then discussed the qualities of both.  Most of the kids chose tempera paint for their portraits.  They found the watercolors frustrating.  This project was quite the challenge but the kids did a great job.  I found a great app called ChatterPix.   It's a photo app that allows you to make your image talk.  You can also add filters, text and stickers.  This app was easy to use and a great way for students to present their artwork and discuss what was meaningful to them.  Once each student made their individual ChatterPix I used iMovie on the iPad to put them together into one little movie.  Here are a few pictures of our self-portraits and examples of ChatterPix.  You can see all of the class movies here:https://sites.google.com/a/bownet.org/besart1/home/grade-2

  

     

Winter Cardinals Grade 1

I have been photographing the cardinals visiting my bird feeders this year and thought my first grade students would love to  see them.  After looking at the pictures and hearing stories about other backyard bird feeders we sketched some cardinals.  I had photographs for them to look at as well as some easy how to draw sheets I found on the internet.  Once the sketches were done we drew our final copy on blue construction paper and used tempera paint to add color. We looked at the cardinal photos and observed the different shades of red.  I mixed up a light, medium and dark shade for the kids to use when painting.  Once the paint dried we used cray-pas to add the branches.  We talked about a variety of trees you would see and the kids chose which ones they wanted to use.  We tried to blend different shades of the tree colors with the cray-pa.  The final detail was adding snow with white tempera paint. 

Sunflower Paintings

Third grade students learned about the sunflower paintings by Vincent van Gogh.  I found a great site called Art History Mom that gave some great kid-friendly information about his paintings.  Check it out at:http://www.arthistorymom.com/post-impressionism/a-flower-delivery-to-you-and-your-kids-from-vincent-van-gogh/
I love this project.  They always turn out great and the kids learn a lot.  We talked about painting with brushstrokes, variety, overlapping and value.  Here are some of our finished paintings.  

Expressive Animal Paintings and Percolator App

Third grade students were inspired by Franz Marc, a German painter and printmaker, one of the key figures of the German Expressionist movement.  We talked about using color to show emotion.  We also practiced blending colors and double loading our brushes.  The paintings turned out great.  

We also used the ipad and the Percolator app to photograph and alter our paintings.  This app has some great effects.  Here are some of our paintings and the percolated version.

Pumpkin Paintings- Tempera and ipads

Second grade students were painting pumpkins.  We talked about how we could use value to make our pumpkins look more three-dimensional.  Students painted their pumpkins using light, medium and dark shades of orange.  We also talked about blending the colors together using our paintbrush.  I found a free painting app on the ipad called Hello Oil Painter.  The students were able to practice the same painting techniques on the ipad without the mess.  The app is really amazing.  It has a paint palette and you can virtually mix colors just like you would with real paint.