2nd Grade Cityscapes

2nd grade students made cityscapes inspired by Wayne Thiebaud's painting, Apartment Hill, 1980.  (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art)  You may never have seen this painting before.  I happened upon it when visiting the museum a couple of years ago and thought it was cool and a different subject from Thiebaud's most popular paintings.  I liked the results when I did this project last year so I kept it pretty much the same. 

Day 1: Introduce the artist, discuss the artwork (describe, analyze, interpret, judge), students draw 1-3 buildings with pencil on black construction paper to be traced with bottled glue.  Ask students to leave a "pinky-width" between shapes so the glue does turn into a big blob.

Day 2: Use construction paper crayons to color in all the shapes.

I'm a sucker for construction paper crayons on black paper and the added texture from the glue makes it more interesting.  The kids really enjoy this project too.  If a student missed the first class, I had them draw their lines in shapes with a white crayon then follow the same procedure for adding color as if the white crayon were glue.

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.