Matisse Shadows

The opening day for the play is nearly upon us and so we are creating artwork with a bit of a Peter Pan theme.... This week we talked about Peter's shadow and looked at artwork by Matisse.
Student's used scrap paper to create themselves next to their shadow. The hall is always bursting with activity but now the walls are too. It's as if they are dancing across the wall! 

Here are the night buildings of London on the other side of the hall.....

Valentine Animals!

This week I read a great book called My Heart is Like a Zoo by Michael Hall. It has wonderful inspiration for making animals out of hearts!
The kids dug in after the story and created with scissors and glue and paper scraps flying!
They came up with everything from penguins to insects to polar bears....

Vertical Landscapes

  

This week we continued our look at Chinese art by looking at vertical landscapes in scrolls. To bring a connection a little closer to home we also looked at photos and paintings of Split Rock Lighthouse. There were many similarities between the images we looked at- boulders, water, boats, cliffs (instead of mountains) and fog or mist. Students drew simple line first and then filled the page with color using watercolor paint. They started with the foreground then middle and finally background. 

I love the way each of them has a different look and feel.

New/Old Table

 I wish I had a better before of this little table project. The surface was covered in scratches and it was bubbled up in places. The chairs that went with it were covered in bright blue and bright red vinyl. The kids and I cut up an old road atlas and found the perfect fabric in my scrap bin for the chairs that match the green in the map! I put a couple coats of modge podge over the top and ta-da! New seriously awesome table!

Year of the Snake Art

We are gearing up for the Chinese New Year - Year of the Snake!
I brought a pile of toy snakes instead of real ones :) for inspiration!
We discussed pattern today and what scales might look like on a real snake. Students used cut sponges dipped in paint to create their snake bodies!
Once they started dipping it was hard to stop!

The upper level painted segments of their snake in a pattern using q-tips....

Chinese New Year

A dragon project before we ring in the Chinese New Year; year of the snake!

This project took some great listening ears, cutting and folding skills.

We discussed pattern and line as well as different types of scales that we saw on the 

fish from last weeks project.