Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Brimfield 5th Grade Horses


      I tried this horse lesson out last year at Suffield and loved it, so I thought we would give it a try here at Brimfield.  Check out the awesome results!













     As an extension for students who finished a bit early, I challenged them to use the oil pastels to create another horse on white paper.  The students were completely on their own for this extra challenge to figure out how to adapt their oil pastel mixing to a new color of background.  Many of these turned out really great too!



Tuesday, February 7, 2012

3rd Grade Sewn Initials



      The third graders at Suffield enjoyed learning simple sewing techniques and creating some fiber art.  They sewed initials from their names and borders with different yarns and strings using different methods.  Once the students completed their initials and borders, they were challenged to add beads and buttons and to add any other embellishments their artwork needed.





 

 







Thursday, February 2, 2012

Fish of Different "Scales" Based on Jason deCaires Taylor


     Suffield first graders created these awesome underwater scenes during my last six week session there.  We started by looking at the fascinating underwater sculptures of Jason deCaires Taylor.  Although it would have been interesting to try to make underwater sculptures, we instead decided to stick with fish!  We talked about the concept of scale (size in artworks) and the way big objects in artworks appear to be close to us and smaller objects appear to be further away.

     The students drew 3 fish on 6" x 9" drawing paper by looking at lots of photos of different kinds of fish.  We then traced the drawings with Sharpies, and then I enlarged and reduced each drawing on the copier after class (so each student ended up with 9 fish: 3 small sized, 3 medium sized, and 3 larger fish).  The students colored their fish with markers, and we created the underwater backgrounds by drawing plant-life with oil pastels and then painting with lots of different cool-colored paints.  We also used some glitter glue in the backgrounds, but it didn't show up very well in the photographs!  Each student also got to use a few 3D Dots to make some fish appear to "pop" out!