Sunday, February 28, 2010

Apartment Hill Drawings

Wayne Thiebaud's "Apartment Hill" painting from 1980 was the inspiration for this lesson.  I am a big Thiebaud fan- love those colors.  I first saw this painting when visiting the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City to check out their new Bloch Building (<--- Awesome.)

To introduce my students to Thiebaud, we looked at Susan Goldman Rubin's book "Counting with Wayne Thiebaud".  (Susan Goldman Rubin has a bunch of cool primary level art books.)  Couting with Wayne Thiebaud is a board book with artwork to correspond with the numbers 1-10.  The text is minimal and I told the 2nd graders that it is geared toward Pre-K students but would work well to show us 11 different of Thiebaud's works of art.  All of the artwork is food themed which led to many exclamations of hunger from my students who have Art class right before lunch!

The students described, analyzed, interpreted, and judged Apartment Hill.  We focused a lot of the discussion on the shapes.  Next, I introduced the assignment to the students.  After the discussion on day 1, the students drew buildings on black construction paper and traced the drawing in glue.  I stressed to the students not to lift the tip of the glue bottle from the paper but I think some got a little carried away when I wasn't looking!  The glue-y papers went onto the drying rack and were ready for color when the students returned to art the following week.

This was the first time I had ever tried glue drawings.  I think it would probably be easier with a little older students!  I had the first class use pastels to add color but switched to construction paper crayons with my second class and all the remaining classes.  I love the brightness of the pastels but was not anticipating how messy it would be with younger students!  Next year I am going to ask for donated paint shirts... I don't plan on using pastels again until I have some sort of barrier between the pastels and the students' clothes.  One girl actually leaned over her drawing to reach for something and came up with a monoprint across the front of her shirt!  Anyway, the construction paper crayons worked great and I was really pleased with the results. 

I invite you to check out our Artsonia exhibit and to view the artwork below!

^This is one of the pastel drawings.




1 comment:

  1. Nice! I have grown to love construction paper crayons. I put a up display of picasso heads my 3rd graders made and everyone in the building was sure they were pastels and were afraid the kids would rub against them and ruin them. They give a really nice effect on dark paper. Good to hear your experiences with the glue -- I haven't tried that project yet and have considered it.

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