Observational Drawing: Trees

During the last week of school, I try to go outside with as many of the classes as possible. It's a nice change of pace, it keeps the art room from getting too torn up since at that point I've been trying to prepare for summer shutdown, and it's an incentive for positive behavior at the end of the school year. Most of my classes earned outside art. Some of the classes painted with water, some drew with sidewalk chalk (some with no specified assignment and some that needed more structure with a challenge), and some of my 2nd and 3rd grade classes practiced observing and drawing trees. I was still seeing "broccoli trees" from a lot of students in this age group and I realized that most had probably never really observed a tree. 

I did a quick demo, talking about the structure of the tree with big trunk, medium branches, and small twigs, then talked about how I was looking at the actual lines and shapes in front of me instead of drawing what was in my head. The students used pencils and thin markers on 9x12 inch paper clipped to some discount clipboards I ordered a few years ago- a great purchase! They've come in really handy for making art outside the classroom.

Check out my students' work! I wish I had thought to do a "before" tree drawing so you could see the improvements that I saw!

Painting with Water

Who knew painting with water would be so popular? I'd done it with Kinders a few years ago but today my 3rd graders and 2nd graders loved it. I talked about how the "paintings" don't last long, only until the water evaporates. Students were making observations about how the water evaporated more quickly in the sun than in the shade, exploring how the water reacted to different surfaces, and even experimenting with how to make longer drip lines with a pendulum motion. Lots of science, right? 

We took our coffee canister water containers outside and each student filled a smaller cup to dip their brush in. It was a super easy last day of art class activity.

Chalk Paint Graffiti

Here's a little preview of what my 6th graders will be trying out during their last art class this week: chalk paint graffiti inspired by Banksy! I will hopefully be posting student examples later this week. A couple of years ago the students tried out spraying water through stencils inspired by Reverse Graffiti. It was fun but only lasted a few minutes before the water evaporated. I saw a recipe for sidewalk paint on Pinterest and decided to give it a try! I'm getting pretty laid back in my recipe following these days. I ended up just dumping some corn starch in spray bottles and adding food coloring and water until it looked right to me! Some over eager 4th graders were helping clean palettes last week and dumped out what I had mixed to clean... soooo I had to start over. Thankfully I had only mixed 2 colors so far!

Anyway, I reused some old posters that were heading for the trash bin as the material to create my stencils and tested out the chalk paint. It works! I think the students will be very excited, especially the ones that have been asking to learn about graffiti. Don't worry, we'll be talking about issues with legality and morality.

If you try out the sidewalk paint, just remember that it will get more opaque as it dries.

You can find this lesson on the SmartTeacher.

If you need ideas for end of the school year projects, check out these lessons: http://www.katiemorrisart.com/2012/07/6-more-ideas-for-end-of-school-year-art.html