Self Portraits -4th Grade

Oil pastel self portraits by the 4th graders, created using the gridding technique. photo 8 x 10, drawing 16 x 20. Great job guys and gals!

Picasso Inspired 1St graders

Look closely, do you see a face?! I do!

Loosen up, get those creative juices flowing. Great Picasso warm up silly face drawing activity from Scholastic art submission. Check it out! http://art.scholastic.com/

Following silly face warm up, I did a demo on taking ideas from multiple sketches and creating a final oil pastel drawing on a large sheet of paper. I actually pulled ideas during the demo from their drawings... which was interesting trying to recreate a child's drawing, not as easy as it sounds! ha!

Students created their own 10 x 20 inch Picasso inspired face- then folded. numbered into four parts, and cut! Students kept their own number 1 and...

...dropped 2, 3, and 4 into the boxes. This was challenging for some students (correct number on each piece of the drawing, cutting into four pieces, and dropping it in the correct box.. but we're learning!) Also, some students had trouble detaching themselves from their original drawing. This was a good introduction to collaborative artworks, and well.... sharing!

Students then took turns drawing a mystery facial features from each box to create a new mixed up, jux-ta-posed portrait. I heard a lot of funny comments during this activity such as, " oHhhH! _______, I got your nose!" Once the students arranged their facial parts in an  appealing order, they glued.

Construction paper mosaic tiles for frame.

Then students added more oil pastel- some students were missing a nose, maybe an eye.. good opportunity to "doctor it up!" They loved that.

Next, we watercolored. We used traditional, glitter, and Metallic watercolors. So fun. (we did this step for two days, allowing the watercolor to dry and be layered up adding interesting texture.)

Last step, a Mosaic border... framing all of a specific element of their drawing- very interesting choices as this stage in the project. We focused on patterns.

Love the metallic watercolors!

This is in my top picks for favorite lessons this year, so fun. It took us about 6 class periods.

Houses in Munich

I really enjoy the simplicity, and color choice in this particular drawing.

      

 Collaged "Houses in Munich' inspired by Wassily Kandinsky. The third grade students used oil pastels to achieve similar marks to Kandinsky's oil painted canvas. I demonstrated sketching the drawing out in pencil, then outlining in black oil pastel before adding color, so that some of the black oil pastel would smear into their other colors. Some students really enjoyed this aesthetic, others chose to keep their drawing very neat. To emphasis certain areas of the drawing, they added black construction paper cut into window, door, bridge, and building shapes. Some students just added a portion of black paper to a each building, others covered entire buildings, both good choices! The most challenging part of this drawing for the students was deciding how much collaged paper to add, I left it rather opened ended and followed up when they asked with "well, what do you think? Remember it's your drawing" ...many times. The never ending question!