2nd Grade Choice Pastel Drawings

I read one of the Smart About Art books on Degas to my 2nd grade students. The students learned that Degas started to use pastels in his work when his eyesight started to fail. They also learned what he had in common with and what was different from the other Impressionist artists. The book classified Degas as an "inside" artist and the others as "outside" artists. After the book, the students started to plan a drawing of just about anything they wanted that would be completed using pastels. I asked them to just lay out their drawings pressing lightly with pencil so they would have a plan. In the second class period, I demonstrated using pastels to draw. I was really glad the OT happened to be helping a student out in Art class on a demo day because she verbally pointed out how I held the pastel between 2 fingers where I hadn't thought to say it. After she said it, it was easy to remind students how to hold the supplies to make them less messy. I did ask the students to try adding more than one color to a shape to see how it added texture and interest. 

This was all part of my getting back to the process over the product movement. I don't see any reason why all the students would need to draw landscapes, for example, to show what they learned. It was much more interesting to all of us when the students were allowed to make more choices.

Are your students as in to volcanoes as mine?

 

This student is really fascinated by the Titanic. He used it as the subject for a later project as well.

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.