Blog Posts
Teaching the Elements of Art Part I
Pinterest really is an amazing tool for teachers. Too often as young teachers we are determined to reinvent the wheel and call everything "our own", when it actuality, most of what we are doing is inspired by things we have seen by artists, authors, musicians and other teachers, even if subconsciously.
Over the summer, I took a keen interest in a poster that was posted on Pinterest of the Elements of Art. I had every intention of using this poster to help guide me through explicit art instruction from time to time... but then time escaped me and before I knew it, it was December!
Upon revisiting the poster, as well as winter art on Pinterest, I came across two different projects that spoke to me and the type of product I knew my kids were capable of producing with guidance.
Found at Deep Space Sparkle
"Winter Wonderlandscapes" at Artsonia
Both of these paintings revolved around the use of simple colours to evoke the clean and bright feeling of a winter night scene. I decided to incorporate the elements of space from Deep Space Sparkle painting and Elements of valuefrom the Artsonia painting to add more depth to the lesson. Here is how we learned about space and value together:
The kids started by painting a circle of white in the center of the upper half of their page. Once they had painted this white moon, they began to add deep blue paint to the edges of their moon to create a light blue paint like that of the glow off the moon on a winter's night.
As they swept their brush in circles to create a larger circular glow around the moon, they added more and more blue to their brush. This is called shading the colour, which means adding a darker colour a little at a time to change the value.
I wasn't able to capture the next step, as it took the most attention and was very brief. The kids folded an 11 x 17 piece of white paper "hotdog" style and cut in a soft and squiggly line along the fold. They used this paper to glue over their dried moon background to create the snowy field.
Once the field was set, the kids were instructed to create trees amoung their field, but not without more instruction.
The kids would contrast the trees (another aspect of value) by making trees that were black, grey, and white.
The black trees were to root at the bottom of the page and come up into their night sky. This would act as the foreground in our picture, and would make the black trees look closest to the viewer and least affected by the light of the moon.
The grey trees were to begin halfway through the snowy field, acting as our midground, or a halfway point between the moon and the closest black trees. They were also slightly more affected by the moon's glow.
The white trees acted as the background of our field, beginning at the snow line. These trees were also more affected by the moon's glow, brightly reflecting the light. It was at this point I heard a lot of "Cool!" and "Oh man!"
With clear direction and time for practice, the kids were able to follow detailed instruction and take their time in producing different points in space on their paintings.
The trees were a lesson in space in four ways:
1. The placement of trees on the horizone added depth.
2. The darker colours being closer up and lighter colours being farther away.
3. The different sizes of the trees added distance to the painting.
4. The overlapping of trees meant there was substance and connectedness in our snowy fields.
Finished products!
This was an immensely successful introduction into the elements of art and one the kids were so proud of. If you would like to find more posters to explain the elements of art with visuals click on The ABCs of Art found at Awesome Artist's website.
Happy Landscaping!
Posted 28th December 2012 by Ms. Crawford's Class
Pinterest really is an amazing tool for teachers. Too often as young teachers we are determined to reinvent the wheel and call everything "our own", when it actuality, most of what we are doing is inspired by things we have seen by artists, authors, musicians and other teachers, even if subconsciously.
Over the summer, I took a keen interest in a poster that was posted on Pinterest of the Elements of Art. I had every intention of using this poster to help guide me through explicit art instruction from time to time... but then time escaped me and before I knew it, it was December!
Upon revisiting the poster, as well as winter art on Pinterest, I came across two different projects that spoke to me and the type of product I knew my kids were capable of producing with guidance.
Found at Deep Space Sparkle
"Winter Wonderlandscapes" at Artsonia
Both of these paintings revolved around the use of simple colours to evoke the clean and bright feeling of a winter night scene. I decided to incorporate the elements of space from Deep Space Sparkle painting and Elements of valuefrom the Artsonia painting to add more depth to the lesson. Here is how we learned about space and value together:
The kids started by painting a circle of white in the center of the upper half of their page. Once they had painted this white moon, they began to add deep blue paint to the edges of their moon to create a light blue paint like that of the glow off the moon on a winter's night.
As they swept their brush in circles to create a larger circular glow around the moon, they added more and more blue to their brush. This is called shading the colour, which means adding a darker colour a little at a time to change the value.
I wasn't able to capture the next step, as it took the most attention and was very brief. The kids folded an 11 x 17 piece of white paper "hotdog" style and cut in a soft and squiggly line along the fold. They used this paper to glue over their dried moon background to create the snowy field.
Once the field was set, the kids were instructed to create trees amoung their field, but not without more instruction.
The kids would contrast the trees (another aspect of value) by making trees that were black, grey, and white.
The black trees were to root at the bottom of the page and come up into their night sky. This would act as the foreground in our picture, and would make the black trees look closest to the viewer and least affected by the light of the moon.
The grey trees were to begin halfway through the snowy field, acting as our midground, or a halfway point between the moon and the closest black trees. They were also slightly more affected by the moon's glow.
The white trees acted as the background of our field, beginning at the snow line. These trees were also more affected by the moon's glow, brightly reflecting the light. It was at this point I heard a lot of "Cool!" and "Oh man!"
With clear direction and time for practice, the kids were able to follow detailed instruction and take their time in producing different points in space on their paintings.
The trees were a lesson in space in four ways:
1. The placement of trees on the horizone added depth.
2. The darker colours being closer up and lighter colours being farther away.
3. The different sizes of the trees added distance to the painting.
4. The overlapping of trees meant there was substance and connectedness in our snowy fields.
Finished products!
This was an immensely successful introduction into the elements of art and one the kids were so proud of. If you would like to find more posters to explain the elements of art with visuals click on The ABCs of Art found at Awesome Artist's website.
Happy Landscaping!
Posted 28th December 2012 by Ms. Crawford's Class
Teaching the Elements of Art Part II
Sometimes I ask myself what the artistic aspect of my classroom would look like if not for Pinterest... and then I shudder and continue to pin.
Stumbling upon a way to use watercolour paints to identify and experiment with colour, we took our first stab at it since last year's Batik project!
Our focus with today's lesson was in blending colours smoothly, and also recognizing what warm and cool colours are. This was a very interesting discussion and led to great descriptive words for warm colours like "firey" and "bright" and words for cold colours like "icy" and "bright". (hehehe!) Yellow and all the colours with red and orange tones are warm. Violet and all the colours with blue and green tones are cool.
"N" traces a snake.
The kids started by choosing a cutout of an animal they are interested in that we have spent time researching. They traced the animal onto watercolour paper, and decided whether or not they wanted a line to designate a landscape.
"M.F." carefully paints like the Northern Lights.
Once their animal had been traced, their papers were taped down to make a thick white edge and keep their work in place. They went over their pencil lines with white crayon to create a wax barrier to keep the watercolour out of their animal silhouette.
The kids decided between using warm or cool colours and joined a group with corresponding paint. It was VERY neccessary to model just how lightly a wet paintbrush needs to touch a blob of watercolour paint in order to pick up colour. The kids practiced with their paintbrushes on their hand. This was a means of guided them into realizing just how gently they need to connect brush to paint.
"P" darkens the line around his wolf so it appears to shine.
Off we went! Kids alternated between thick and thin brushes depending on how close they were to their silhouettes. My favourite part of this art lesson was watching the kids experiment with ratios of paint to water and how successful their blending of colours could be.
Once the paint was dry, the tape was removed from the outside of the painting creating a beautiful border. We made sure to masking tape by learning from a masking tape mistake...
"M.F."'s final wolf howling at the moon.
"H" creates a beautiful caribou.
"M.W." worked so carefully to blend yellows on her bear.
We laminated to showcase them outside the classroom and act as a backdrop to post information about out learning around animals, winter, and colour.
Beautiful and brave these kids are!
Happy watercolouring!
Sometimes I ask myself what the artistic aspect of my classroom would look like if not for Pinterest... and then I shudder and continue to pin.
Stumbling upon a way to use watercolour paints to identify and experiment with colour, we took our first stab at it since last year's Batik project!
Our focus with today's lesson was in blending colours smoothly, and also recognizing what warm and cool colours are. This was a very interesting discussion and led to great descriptive words for warm colours like "firey" and "bright" and words for cold colours like "icy" and "bright". (hehehe!) Yellow and all the colours with red and orange tones are warm. Violet and all the colours with blue and green tones are cool.
"N" traces a snake.
The kids started by choosing a cutout of an animal they are interested in that we have spent time researching. They traced the animal onto watercolour paper, and decided whether or not they wanted a line to designate a landscape.
"M.F." carefully paints like the Northern Lights.
Once their animal had been traced, their papers were taped down to make a thick white edge and keep their work in place. They went over their pencil lines with white crayon to create a wax barrier to keep the watercolour out of their animal silhouette.
The kids decided between using warm or cool colours and joined a group with corresponding paint. It was VERY neccessary to model just how lightly a wet paintbrush needs to touch a blob of watercolour paint in order to pick up colour. The kids practiced with their paintbrushes on their hand. This was a means of guided them into realizing just how gently they need to connect brush to paint.
"P" darkens the line around his wolf so it appears to shine.
Off we went! Kids alternated between thick and thin brushes depending on how close they were to their silhouettes. My favourite part of this art lesson was watching the kids experiment with ratios of paint to water and how successful their blending of colours could be.
Once the paint was dry, the tape was removed from the outside of the painting creating a beautiful border. We made sure to masking tape by learning from a masking tape mistake...
"M.F."'s final wolf howling at the moon.
"H" creates a beautiful caribou.
"M.W." worked so carefully to blend yellows on her bear.
We laminated to showcase them outside the classroom and act as a backdrop to post information about out learning around animals, winter, and colour.
Beautiful and brave these kids are!
Happy watercolouring!