Brushstroke and Line

I got the idea for this project form Cathy Weisman Topal's book Children and Painting. It's a book that I really like. It lays out units that correspond to the art elements in a way that doesn't feel forced or contrived to me. It feels more like an organic exploration of materials and mark-making which is so important to early elementary students. For the first couple days we worked on big brush strokes and then we spend some time exploring smaller brush strokes. I talked about the classic lines, e.g., straight, wavy, zig-zag. thick, thin, but I also tried to encouraged them to find ways to vary them or to invent their own. I also encouraged them to experiment with direction.

Portraits

I wanted to to a project on differentiating abstract and realistic artwork. I decided to start by having students do realistic portraits. Here are some of the highlights. These are from 2nd Grade.

Landscapes

Here are some landscapes my second graders did. They turned out fantastic. They did a really excellent job observing the reference photographs that I gave them. We did this in conjunctions with a social studies unit where students learned about different types of landscapes, e.g., mountains, plains, coast.

Tissue Paper + Water

Shoes

My students love talking about shoes. Air Jordon's and Air Force Ones seem to be the two classroom favorites, although some of our female students also had some impressive illustrations of some high fashion high heels.

Mono-print Paintings

This is an adapted form of mono-printing that uses plastic ziplock bags. A lot of my students like to work really tight and neatly and I thought this was a good way to get them out of their comfort zone and loosen up.

Leaf

For this project I had students draw from observation. I tried to really encourage the students to include flaws, tears, holes and imperfections in the leaf. 

Watercolor Studies / Landscapes

This is based off an idea I found on Pintrest. It was a really wonderful opportunity to allow the students to experiment with different watercolor effects. The second component is to encourage students to plan and consider how to layer objects to create a sense of depth.