Cities and Store Fronts

The upper level has been working on personal store fronts. They started with pencil carefully detailing, outlined in black marker and finally will finish with colored pencil. When they are all displayed together it will be quite the shopping locale!



The lower levels are working on cityscapes. We have been discussing shape and looking at illustrations of architecture for inspiration. Students have been defining their own shapes such as, the taco (semi-circle)! They are all turning out so different! Part two of the project is next week where they will add windows and some background color! I can hardly wait!!

Monsters!

Today I read the book Monster Munchies. It's a great counting and rhyming book with very friendly and fun monster illustrations. After the story we had a wonderful discussion about shape, texture and line. The lower levels used water color and oil pastel and the upper level worked on monsters using cut paper.

X-Ray Vision!

Today I read the book "Boo to You" by Lois Ehlert. There are fabulous collage illustrations in this book and it seemed timely with Halloween around the corner!
We took a look at a human skeleton and discussed backbones, and rib cages as well as many other bones and they differ from a cat.
Some students included a full moon, pumpkin or a haunted house in the distance to add an extra spooky touch!

Spiders and Self Portraits!

Today we read the book Aaaargghh, Spider! by Lydia Monks. The book has some wonderful illustrations that demonstrate great facial expressions.
Students used oil pastel and watercolor to create their own self portraits with an expression they might have if a spider were about to land on them! The results were marvelous!

Stages of a Butterfly

Today we continued looking at Van Gogh's work. This time we looked at three of his butterfly paintings for inspiration. Students watch the stages and released real butterflies last month. Since this was fresh in their minds I thought it was a nice opportunity to talk about it and create a beautiful series.

Evening Owls

Today we took a look at some paintings and photographs of the great horned owl for inspiration. We discussed details like feather pattern, shapes of features, and the evening sky. We also looked at a self portrait of Vincent Van Gogh and discussed ideas of how we could make the background behind the owls more interesting. Students used permanent marker, water color and white oil pastel to create their owl imagery. I love how they all look so different!

Van Gogh Inspired Sunflowers

This week we looked at Van Gogh's sunflowers. I brought in some real sunflowers for inspiration along with Van Gogh's images. We discussed texture and students looked and touched the flowers to get a better idea of how to illustrate what they were seeing. Every single work was different and so beautiful!