Grant Wood Clay Chickens

Jenny Murphy Holiday Trees

Students looked at commercial artist Jenny Murphy's website and artwork online. Murphy isn't a trained artist, she worked in finance for over 20 years. Painting was a hobby she loved, and ended up turning it into a career by opening her store and selling her work. We discussed in class how hobbies we love can often times end up being a career without any formal training, it just takes determination. Murphy uses bright acrylic colors with bold, black outlines. Her work is simple and very stylized. Students first drew out their stylized tree shape, divided it with a zig zag line, and added simple patterns.

Snowflake Bentley

Students learned about the “Snowflake Man” Wilson Bentley. A self educated farmer, Bentley attracted world attention with his groundbreaking work in the area of photography, most notably his extensive work with snow crystals (commonly known as snowflakes). By adapting a microscope to a bellows camera, and years of trial and error, he became the first person to photograph a single snow crystal in 1885.

For this lesson we discussed radial symmetry; symmetry of an object around a center axis or point. Each student drew unique snowflakes. Each line became one point of the snowflake. Students then decorated their snowflakes with shapes and lines. The only rule was that it had to show radial symmetry.

Students then outlined their snowflakes in Sharpie, and used a wet on wet watercolor painting technique to paint the background.  

Romare Bearden "The Block" Collage

The month of February is Black History Month. During this month of remembering African Americans in history, students in art class learned about African American Artists.

2nd grade students learned about the African American painter and collage artist, Romare Bearden. He spent much of his career as a painter, but is most recognized for his collage work.

A collage is when artists use several different materials to create a new one. Bearden often used photographs, magazines, and newspaper photos in his collage art.

2nd graders were inspired by Bearden’s artwork The Block. The Block celebrates a busy Harlem, New York city block. The artwork is 6 panels long, measuring 18 feet. This artwork is a symbolic scene from an African American experience

2nd graders used construction paper and magazine pages and photos to create a Second Grade City. Again, they were working on basic art skills of cutting and gluing, but also trying to create an interesting piece of art that tells a story.

Snowman Mosaic

Learning Targets:

• I can identify a geometric shape.

• I can glue pieces of paper flat to the background.
• I can evenly space out the geometric shapes I am gluing to create a mosaic.

Romare Bearden Collage Portraits

The month of February is Black History Month. During this month of remembering African Americans in history, students in art class learned about African American Artists.

4th grade students learned about the African American painter and collage artist, Romare Bearden. He spent much of his career as a painter, but is most recognized for his collage work.

A collage is when artists use several different materials to create a new one. Bearden often used photographs, magazines, and newspaper photos in his collage art.

4th grade students used magazine ads to create and assemble a portrait using all different types of facial features and other details. They were very creative in their process and they turned out very interesting!

We also discussed how artists display their artwork in museums and public places. Artists mount, frame, or mat their artwork to make it look nice and ready for public viewing. 4th graders worked on matting their artwork to colored paper for their final display.

Family Portraits

First graders discussed that February is Black History Month and watched a short video by Kid President about Martin Luther King, Jr.

We then learned about the African American artist and author Faith Ringgold. After reading Tar Beach, ( which is written and illustrated by Ringgold),  students discussed the sorts of activities that they did at their family table. Students said they eat dinner, play games, and do their homework at the table. Students then used a circle tracer to draw their table and people tracers to add their family. Details were added to show the table activity and to create individual family members. 

They outlined their drawings with Sharpie pen, colored in with colored pencil, and then created quilt squares with oil pastels.

They did a great job working on their drawing, tracing, and coloring skills.