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!

1st Grade Art History Inspired Trees

For one of their last projects of the school year, my 1st graders made Art History inspired trees! The first half of the first class was spent viewing and discussing a PowerPoint I put together with an assortment of works from Art History depicting trees. I wanted to show a variety of trees for several reasons- I didn't want the students to feel like they should copy a famous painting and I think the students need to see that Art doesn't have to be totally realistic to be "good". When I set about making a presentation, I realized I could only think of a handful of paintings with trees in them. Then my world was changed when I discovered WikiPaintings.org. WikiPaintings allows you to search by artist or keyword. I searched for "tree" and got more results than I could possibly have shown. I went through and selected several. 

I don't think my presentation was chronologically organized, I'm pretty sure I just added slides in the order that I found them. I've embedded the document below so you can have a starting point if you want to make your own PPT.

Art History Trees PPT

I told the students they would be making trees but that the style and type of tree was totally up to them. Then there was an added challenge- the students were not allowed to use a paintbrush! I gave students the option of drawing their trees in black tempera paint using a popsicle stick or a twig. They were pretty excited about this! I did have a couple papers end up totally black, but I suppose that could have happened in 1st grade even with paintbrushes.

 In the second class period when the papers were good and dry, the students added color with crayon and tempera. They started with crayon- maybe rolling a crayon for sky and grass or adding more branches, then they were still not allowed to use paintbrushes for the tempera paint. Instead of a paintbrush, the students could use just one finger. Most did a really good job and probably got less messy when they were allowed to use one finger than when they paint normally. They were trying to be really careful.

Take a look at some of our very varied results below!

Kindergarten Tint and Shade Triangle Trees

Oh, Pinterest, you give me so many ideas.

Source: purlbee.com via Katie on Pinterest

I saw this quilt pinned a couple months ago and right away knew what I would do with the idea. I love how simple and graphic it is and the strong shape. A big part of the Kindergarten math curriculum at my school is learning the 5 basic geometric shapes (circle, square, triangle, rectangle, ellipse) and I like to support that however I can. Last year we did wax-resist pyramid paintings for "triangle" but I wanted to try something wintery this year, and this was an easy 2-3 class period project.

Day 1: Using tempera to paint 4 different greens. 

1. Green right out of the bottle

2. Mixing yellow and blue

3. Green with white added- TINT

4. Green with black added- SHADE

Before painting, students folded their papers hotdog and hamburger style to make a "t" down the middle. Reviewed paintbrush technique but not cleaning since no water is required for this as long as you do the shade last. Just rinse brushes at the end of class!

 Day 2: Make some trees!

We discussed the quilt picture, students identified the shapes, and pointed out the different colors and patterns. I asked the students to tell me what they were looking at a picture of and most said "Christmas trees" (it was December, after all), and I used that opportunity to put in a quick science lesson about evergreen trees. Next, we cut the papers into 4 sections and I showed how to cut triangles. I gave students the choice between drawing triangles first or "drawing with scissors". I tried to get them to cut their first 4 triangles so big that they touched the top AND the bottom of the painted paper then they could use the scraps to make "baby" trees. I had pre-cut, or more like chopped since I definitely didn't measure, some brown pieces for trunks. We covered "just a dot, not a lot" for glue bottle use and they went at it.

*Tip- Save the painted paper scraps for students who missed the painting day.

Day 3: Some students would have had time for this at the end of the 2nd class but I decided to utilize "peer tutoring" and have them help struggling classmates with their gluing instead. In the beginning of the 3rd class, we reviewed different kinds of lines and practiced drawing them in the air with our fingers. I have no actual proof, but I'm convinced that getting the kinesthetic action helps the students remember it better. And it's a little silly and fun. After our practice, the students used construction paper crayons to add patterns to their trees. I told the students about shadows and gave a 30 second demonstration. Most tried to add shadows then added other details in the background. I had a couple students who missed the first 2 classes so they just made construction paper crayon drawings of patterned trees.

Skills/Concepts Learned or Reviewed: Geometric Shapes, Cutting, Gluing, Lines, Patterns, Color Mixing, Tints, Shades, Thinking about Composition

This student said she made a whole forest. 

It may look like this student was just being sloppy by gluing every scrap of paper she could find onto her background, but she had a whole story about how all the trees in her forest fell down. 

I love the letters on this tree!

*I forgot to say earlier that this is doable as a sub plan. I was there for every painting class but was gone for one afternoon of gluing and another afternoon of adding patterns. I was afraid it might turn out too cookie cutter but I think it's ok since nobody traced anything and the students were free to add whatever colors and patterns they wanted on trees they placed wherever they wanted.

Everyone Knows Money Doesn't Grow on Trees

The saying "money doesn't grow on trees" and Gustav Klimt's Cartoon for the frieze of the Villa Stoclet in Brussels: central  part of the tree of life. 1905-1909 were the inspiration for this lesson. I thought that this would be a good way to find out what my students were interested in and give them some choices while still having structure.

The students discussed Austrian artist Gustav Klimt's "Tree of Life". Klimt was very interested in creating patterns and visual texture using shape. We discussed how the tree was abstracted and stylized with the lines of the branches forming spirals. I also showed the students "the Kiss" and a couple other paintings of trees but I left it at that since it is not uncommon to find nudity in Klimt's artwork. When discussing the artwork, I asked for initial reactions and then we went through each of the elements of art. I have the poster series posted on one of the classroom walls so we just covered one at a time. My students are still getting used to critiquing art but they did pretty good with the structure of each element. I reminded them of what each element means and then called on random students to try and describe how each was used by the artist.

First, the students drew a stylized tree with something unusual growing on it- something that THEY wish would grow on trees. The thing growing on trees could be a real object or an idea. "Love" was a popular choice with the girls and I think the most common choice with the boys was video games. Next, the students traced over all of their pencil lines with crayon and finally, watercolor paint was applied to create a wax-resist painting.

My SMART goal this year is basically about color theory so I decided instead of just painting trees, I also wanted to teach the students about warm and cool colors. Either warm or cool colors were chosen for crayon and the opposite was used to paint creating more contrast.