2nd Grade Kalahari Animal Silhouettes

 This is the lesson my 2nd graders completed for the African Art themed project the Art teachers in my district were doing K-12.  I found another artist whose work I really enjoy and the students respond to on the Art of Africa.  The painting (image from Pinterest below) is called "Crocodile and Elephant" and was created by Andry Kashivi, an artist from Southern Africa.

Source: theartofafrica.co.za via Katie on Pinterest

This lesson ended up taking three 40-minute class periods.

Day 1: Introduction.  View and discuss the artwork with lots of emphasis on description and breaking the painting down to elements.  After the students identified the animals, they learned the word silhouette (ok, some learned it) and identified the shapes in the background as organic.  I told them that they would be creating artwork inspired by Kashivi's paintings with brightly colored organic shapes in the background and the silhouette of Kalahari Desert animals on top.  After the first class, I realized that I would need to guide the students through drawing their organic shapes or they would never, ever finish painting. I asked them to draw two lines from side to side and one line from top to bottom that were a "medium amount of curvy".  I had to get kind of specific or some went crazy with lots of loops and I knew it would take too long to paint.  I did tell the students that their shapes did not have to look exactly like mine, they just needed to use the right kind of lines to get a good amount of shapes.  Most classes had enough time to begin painting at the end of the first class.

Day 2: Finish painting! I put trays of tempera paint in bright yellow, orange, magenta, and green at each table.  Students who painted fast added a second coat of paint.  We all really enjoyed the bright colors.

Day 3: I showed the students images of Kalahari Desert animals and put black and white copies at their tables.  The students were given a half sheet of black construction paper on which to draw their animals.  Originally I was going to have the students paint the silhouettes but they acted freaked out and said they would rather cut.  I'm undecided on if this was a good move or not.  In my demonstration I showed the students how to just draw the outline of the animals, not all the details on the body.  I spent a few minutes modeling cutting the shapes and showed them my tricks for tricky areas.  I also asked them to flip the animals over when they glued so that no pencil marks would show.  Some remembered, some didn't. In the last few minutes of work time, I showed the students how they could use the end of their paintbrushes to make dots for eyes with white and red paint.  You can see in the picture below that some went a little crazy with the dots!

The next picture is a comparison of 2nd grade cutting skills. The student on the left was really careful and didn't chop off any limbs. (I did show students who accidentally cut off legs how to glue both pieces on their paintings so that they touched "like puzzle pieces".) The student on the right... well, I'm not sure what kind of animal it was supposed to be.  Even though some students struggled with cutting, most were trying hard.  Some just cut out blobs of shapes and didn't cut in between legs, for example, until I asked them about it.  Then they acted confused!

I think if I were to teach this lesson again, it would be with older students.  These examples are probably the best results from the grade.  I think it was just a bit too tricky for most of my 2nd graders to translate the shape of animals, and not so familiar animals at that, into silhouettes.  I think the silhouettes would have been easier to see if they were painted instead of cut out but then the drawing would have been a problem.  But, we reviewed shapes, learned about some new animals, and had fun making some colorful artwork so in that way, it was a success. You can see the rest of the student artwork in our Artsonia gallery.

Monochromatic Silhouettes

I posted about my 6th grade Monochromatic Silhouette lesson before but now I've finally gotten ALL of the artwork photographed and on to Artsonia.  I got the artwork hung in the hallway in time for parent teacher conferences.  I hung the artwork in two groups and I actually feel a lot better about the results of the project when I saw them all together.  I limited the students' paper choices to orange, blue, green, or purple to make the painting process easier.

Check out the action painting 4th from the left on the 2nd row from the top!

 

Check out this exhibit on Artsonia!

6th Grade Monochromatic Silhouettes

Ancient Greek pottery was the inspiration for this project. I thought the students were going to be studying Greece at the time of the lesson but the schedule had changed. Guess they just got a little preview. The students viewed (described, analyzed, interpreted, and judged) images of Greek pottery and discussed the positive and negative space relationships, the monochromatic silhouettes, and how the images showed action to tell a story. The students thought of their favorite things to do and chose one activity to show in their silhouette paintings.

I really liked the image below and the students were excited to find out that the central figures on the pot are boxing! I called on individual students to make observations about the pot and after they had shared their initial observations, we just went through each of the elements of art and discussed how each is used on the pot. The pot, a three-dimensional work of art with two-dimensional surface decoration allowed for a great discussion on positive and negative space. I like to tell them that negative space is the space around a space to get their attention! The actual pot is positive space and the empty area around it and through the handles is negative space. When it comes to the decoration, the figures and designs in the darker color are positive and the lighter color (empty space) is negative space.

510-500 BC

I told the students that the figures and props in their paintings were going to be one solid color to make the entire work monochromatic (mono= one, chromatic= color). A monochromatic color scheme uses tints and shades of one color. A tint is a color with white added to it and a shade is a color with black added to it. I had a wooden drawing model that I put behind a piece of fabric serving as a makeshift curtain to show them a silhouette but it was still hard for the students to grasp that everything they drew was going to be one solid color. I finally thought to remind them of the iPod commercials that showed the silhouette and that helped. I happily made a fool of myself to demonstrate finding the best angle to show the action of the activity the students had chosen. I asked for ideas they had come up with and showed a straight-on and profile view and talked about which would be a better choice for each.

The students didn't have very much experience drawing figures so I told them just to do their best. Before they started drawing, I talked about the ancient Greek ideas of the "ideal" human proportions. I told them that we didn't need to worry about faces since just the silhouette is shown but that your foot is the same size as your head and that your body is about 8 heads high. The students in the first 6th grade class didn't believe me so I had one of the students measure my head. Then we got to integrate math! The student said my head measured 8 inches so we multiplied that by 8 to get 64 inches. They I had the students divide 64 by 12 to convert the inches to feet. We came up with 5' 4". I am really 5' 7" but I told them that is pretty close! The students chose a piece of construction paper and spent the first class drawing the silhouettes in pencil. I normally have assigned seats but to make it easier to handle paint for the second class, I grouped the student by the color of paper they had chosen. I passed out pretty small brushes and the students painted in their figures/props. We need to keep working on craftsmanship but here are a few of the more successful student examples:

Sports were the most popular activities chosen but some students chose things like reading, making art, or baking. Just about anything can work, you just have to find the right angle.