3rd grade Landacapes

One of my demos for 3rd grade before Covid-19 was about landscapes. We first watched the PBS Bob Ross Remix because I knew some of the kids liked Bob Ross and because I really appreciate some of his ideas like "this is your world, you're the creator, find freedom on the canvas."

I also just love the video. My husband seriously played the song for me a few times when I was in labor with my 3rd kid! I find it very relaxing. Students do too, high school students still ask me if we can listen to after I play it for them when we talk landscapes!

Next we looked at photos of landscapes and talked about foreground, middle ground, and background, the horizon line, and the element of space. Students who decided to make a landscape (I think all of them did) spent the rest of the first class period sketching out their ideas in pencil.

In the second class period, I demonstrated procedures for watercolor paint and for liquid tempera. We talked about the differences between the two mediums and then the students chose which they wanted to use. Most preferred tempera, but probably 1/3rd chose watercolor. 

Most students spent about 3 class periods on their landscapes, some longer. In the 3rd class, I talked about how to tell if your work is finished and showed how you can add other media like oil pastels or colored pencils on top of paintings if you want.

I really enjoyed seeing what students chose to put in their landscapes. A few represented a real place they had been but most chose to use their imaginations and to make a place they would like to visit.

Tempera Paintings

Still trying to wrap up writing about last year's artwork. It takes longer with choice art if you want to have some sort of theme. Besides clay, liquid tempera is probably my students' overall favorite. I think they feel more like their idea of "real" artists when using liquid paint. The paintings in this post were by last year's 5th graders and there are things I really like about each of them.

I love the simplicity and colors in this landscape. It really reminds me of the flint hills and was painted from the student's memory. The student was pretty proud of mixing the colors in his sky. I think this landscape showed a mature sense of restraint!

This student painted her catfish during our "art of conservation" unit for the State Fish Art Contest, but didn't end up entering it. I like the composition, the color mixing, and the realistic looking aquatic plants.

1. The sky comes ALL THE WAY down to the ground. This is an accomplishment, people!

2. The clouds look fluffy.

3. White highlights on the petals instead of black outlines.

This is getting me so excited to move on to more choice this year. So far we've been working on projects for our Cultural Heritage focus of India. The "India" projects are wrapping up and the painting center will be open soon.

Experiment Paintings

This spring I thought it would be fun to loosen up and do some "experiment paintings" with my 5th and 6th grade students. They're naturally in the stages of artistic development where children become critical of their work and can get very hung up on things looking realistic. We went a totally different direction with some non-objective paintings. Almost every student tried out this style of painting by the end of the school year.

We could've gone old school to learn about non-objective painting with some nonobjective paintings from Art History (de Kooning, Pollock, Kandinsky, Rothko, etc.) but since they were really starting to get squirrely at that point in the school year, I decided to show a video that Alisa Burke put together on some everyday objects she likes to use in her paintings. You can see the video here: http://alisaburke.blogspot.com/2013/11/my-favorite-everyday-things-for-painting.html

 At the conclusion of the video, I asked students to name tools they noticed. After the students listed what they had noticed from the video, I showed what unusual tools we had in the art room- bubble wrap, tubes for stamping, tin cans, foam brushes for stamping, brayers, etc. 

 I filled egg cartons with tempera paint but suggested that students not try to use EVERY color. We talked about the color wheel- which colors might blend nicely together and which would likely result in mud. I did a demo and showed how to "dip the tip" of the brush into the paint and how I could switch colors without water by trying to use all the paint on my brush first, and then not stirring the new color. I think if the students had used water, the paintings would not be as vibrant. I set out all of our tools on a table and the students just picked what they wanted to use.

 I told the students these were "experiment paintings" for a reason- I wanted them to explore the qualities of the paint, try out different color combinations, textures, etc. without being afraid of making a mistake. The end result was a lot of awesome paintings. Some looked like finished pieces, while other needed more attention in later classes. 

 One way to use the painted papers is to add solid colored strips for a paper weaving project.

 Other uses for the papers are

• drawing on top of the painted paper
• painting on top of it
• collage- background
• collage- cut it apart and glue onto something else
• journaling on top

Next year I may do this before opening up the collage center. I'm thinking about getting rid of my magazine stash as the students K-6 relied too heavily on magazine images instead of making their own. I think it may be helpful to show the students how to make their own papers first.

Painted Papers and Sgraffito

A student tries out the sgraffito method with tempera paint

Once I realized that most of my students were relying WAY too heavily on magazine images in collage work, and not even really changing those images into something new, I decided I needed to go back and do another mini lesson on collage. I showed many examples of Eric Carle's illustrations from books on my classroom book shelf and we talked about how he creates visual texture in his painted papers which are later cut into shapes and glued down to make the picture. One of the painting techniques I demonstrated was sgraffito- applying one layer of paint, putting another on top, and then using the handle of the paintbrush to scratch through the top layer. I just made some simple patterns in my demonstration but the students were totally into sgraffito! Several put so much work into using the technique on their papers that they decided to keep the work as finished pieces instead of cutting them apart. I saw the technique pop up in other projects for the rest of the year. It's fun to see students so excited about a new technique.

Happy Little Landscape Paintings

I still think PBS's Bob Ross Remix is the best video on YouTube. If you haven't watched it yet, do it now. I'll wait. You won't be sorry.

The video is so positive and fun! It is just full of positive statements including:

"I believe, I believe, every day's a good day when you paint"

"We don't make mistakes. We just make happy accidents."

"Believe that you can do it, 'cause you can do it."

 My 3rd grade students think it's pretty cool, too! They loved watching the video as the jumping off point for some landscape paintings. After all, one of the lines in the song is "This is your world, you're the creator. Find freedom on this canvas." After watching the video and pointing out how Bob Ross was very positive and talked about "happy little clouds" and "happy little trees", the students discussed how Art could make us feel happy. The students were asked to think of a landscape that would make them feel happy because they would soon be painting it!

The schedule was really funky in August and the beginning of September. My Tuesday classes ended up having 3 class periods to paint, Friday classes had 2, and Monday classes only had 1. After the remix, the Tuesday and Friday classes also got to watch a short YouTube clip of Bob Ross' technique for painting clouds. My student teacher or I demonstrated painting a simple sky and the best Ross cloud technique we could muster using tempera paint, then the students painted their clouds. The next thing we asked them to do on the first day was to paint their ground and other big shapes. The details, and more demonstrations on things like plants and adding texture came in the 2nd class period.

I've been so obsessed with inspired by the remix that I decided this project would make a good bulletin board display. Let me tell you, I've had more comments on this bulletin board than any other I've ever put together! Teachers seriously stopped in the Art room when they weren't even dropping off a class to tell me they liked it or share a memory of watching the Joy of Painting on PBS. 

I like creating QR codes to put on my project description signs. I don't think anybody ever scans them, partly because I don't think a lot of people know what they are. I decided to add a little explanation this year. Underneath my QR code, it says "Wondering about the weird black and white squares? Scan them with a free QR code reader on your "smart" device to be directed to the website." Hopefully the explanation will be helpful.

Check out a few of the students' happy little landscapes. I am very behind on posting artwork to Artsonia this year so these are all I have photographed for now.

Kindergarten Color Mixing

Have you seen this super fun video from Sesame Street? The students (and I) loved it! After we watched it through once, they wanted to hear it again so we just replayed over and over while they worked and sang along!

Source: holykaw.alltop.com via Katie on Pinterest

What were they working on? In the first class, painting whatever they wanted as long as they were mixing primary colors to create secondary colors. We took a little break to work on clay projects then came back to these at the end of the school year. In the second class period, I gave one class paper mosaic tiles to add designs on top of their paintings, and the other black tempera paint to add their designs. Easy peasy.

K- The Very Hungry Caterpillar's Fruit

 These Eric Carle inspired fruit collages were one of the last assignments my Kindergarteners completed this school year. We spent 3 class periods on the project but covered a lot of concepts!

Concepts covered

Illustrations

Color- Complementary, Analogous

Texture

Painting- Wax Resist, Tempera

Drawing

Shape

Collage- Cutting, Gluing

Space- Positive and Negative

In the first class period, I showed an animated video of The Very Hungry Caterpillar that I found on YouTube. I wish I had noticed that it is the story this month on Barnes & Noble's Online Storytime so we could have had Eric Carle read it to us! After the video, we talked about how the illustrations were made and watched a video clip of Eric Carle painting papers in his studio. I gave each student a 6x9 inch piece of paper on which they used crayons to create texture. I explained that the students would be making fruit collages and we talked about the colors of different kinds of fruit. The students chose the appropriate color of watercolor paint and used it to create a wax-resist painting.

In the second class period, I introduced the concept of complementary colors since the background would be the complement to the fruit's color. I explained that complementary colors are like best friends- they are opposite on the color wheel but make each other look brighter when they are side by side. I quizzed the students to make sure they got it. (If you painted a red apple, what color will your background be? If you painted a yellow banana, what color will you use?) Next, I demonstrated painting with tempera and adding texture using a texture comb or the wrong end of the paintbrush. For the first class I taught this lesson to, I gave every student a piece of gray construction paper since I figured it would be covered up anyway. These ended up being a little dull. In the next classes, I gave the students a piece of construction paper analogous to the color of paint they would be using on their background. (Ex: If their background would be painted purple, I either gave them blue or red paper to paint on top of.) This made things a lot more colorful and interesting when hints of it show through. This did add considerably more time to set up but I think it was worth it.

On the third day, I asked the students to draw the outline of their fruit on the BACK of their wax-resist paper. I checked each one to make sure it was big enough (touching at least 2 sides of the paper) before  cutting. After the students cut, I came around and punched a 1 inch hole in their fruit somewhere to show where the caterpillar munched through like in the book. This allowed us to talk about positive and negative space. The students glued their shapes down and we shared scraps to make stems and leaves if needed.

*I bought a Martha Stewart 1 inch punch at Michaels for this project and I really like it! It was on sale so the price was reasonable and it seems really sturdy. I saved the painted paper circles that were punched out and used them on my hallway signs. I may get really ambitious next year and use the circles to make a bulletin board border.

Students who missed one of the painting days were given a regular piece of construction paper and crayons to create texture. For fruit that needed more than one color, like watermelon, they used solid colored construction paper for the accent.