Folk Art Landscape

 We looked at different styles of artwork including; Abstract, Non-Objective and Realistic. We also talked about the difference between Folk Art and Fine Art. We then looked at a collection of Heather Galler's (a New York Folk Arist) paintings and talked about what we saw. Observations included: lots of color, shapes, and patterns.

We then got to work on our own landscapes inspired by Heather Galler.  Starting with a pencil and tracing with a sharpie. Our next step will be to color in with oil pastels and watercolor paints.

Starting off the year with Art

 

"Just make a mark and see where it takes you" The Dot, by Peter H. Reynolds

You Be You, By Linda Kranz. 

Color mixing to create a Rainbow

Rowe School City (Architecture unit finished)

 

Architecture

Rowe artist learned about what an Architect does and looked at some famous examples of architecture including The Dome of the Rock, Notre Dame, Falling Water, The Dancing House, The Golden Pavilion, and St Basil's Cathedral. We then got to work building our own building frames out of craft sticks.  The buildings could be traditional or creative. 

Here are some examples of the steps so far. 

Animal Unit

 Rowe artists are working on using their "artist eyes" to break animals down into shapes in order to learn to draw what they see. 

The lesson started by practicing drawing at least 2 animals by looking at pictures from the book ZooOlogy.  The artists will then pick one animal to draw for a final piece of art. 

An additional part to this animal unit is creating a Relief sculpture tile out of clay. We talked about the difference between 2-dimensional drawings and 3-dimensional sculptures. These sculptures will come home with two holes at the top so they can be hung on the wall. 

Block Printing

A print from each Rowe artist is hanging in the hallway. 

This unit took two classes. 

During the first class, Rowe artists created their printing plates, by drawing a sea creature, and then tracing over it on to a piece of thin foam. 

If there was time black ink was used to create a practice print on white paper.

The second class was all for printmaking. Rowe artists had a variety of paper and ink colors to choose from, and were able to create multiple prints. 

Small portfolios were made to hold the printing plates and prints in order to take them home safely. 

Monoprinting and Wrapping pinch pots

Rowe artists practiced making monoprints using tempera paint and then used them to wrap up their pinch pots to take home.

Colorful Pots and Yayoi Kusama

Kindergarten Painted Pots   &     First Grade Glazed Pots

We learned about Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama by reading Yayoi Kusama Covered Everything in Dots and Wasn't Sorry.  We used her dot style to paint our pots in first grade and make wrapping paper in Kindergarten. 

Be on the lookout for your artist's pinch pots coming home soon. First-grade pots are food & drink safe. Kindergarten pots are a great way to store special small trinkets.

Pinch Pots

 We learned about two traditional potters:  Juan Quezada, by watching a reading of The Pot That Juan Built and Maria Martinez, by watching a few clips from a documentary. 

We then learned the steps to create a pinch pot. 

Kindergarten artists were able to turn the pinch pots into any shape. 

First-grade artists will be using glaze and therefore their pots were made into bowls or drinking cups. 

Finished Trees

 

Printmaking, Texture, and Creative Trees

Continuing with our talks about the Elements of Art we learned more about Lines, Pattern and introduced Texture. 

Some classes worked on printmaking with leaves and paint. We talked about how the bumped up texture of the veins of the leaves made it so we could make prints.

We also talked about how artists use pattern to add Texture and detail. Students were able to use sharpies to add pattern to pre-printed leaves to show more texture. 

We learned the difference between texture and visual texture and talked about how artists use line, pattern and color to show visual texture. 

Inspiration

The first few classes this year have focused on the Elements of Art including Color, Line & Pattern. We also discussed just making your mark and getting started, Inspiration, and color mixing. 

We watched a read-aloud of The Dot, by Peter Reynolds, and then made our marks on large white dots of color diffusing paper with Primary color markers (red, yellow & blue).  We then talked about color mixing and used droppers to add water to our colorful dots to watch the Primary colors mix into the Secondary colors. 

After our colorful dots dried we learned about different types of lines and practiced making patterns. We then watched a read-aloud of You Be You, by Linda Krantz, and talked about how the illustrator used line patterns to show the scales of the fish. We added an eye, mouth, gills & a fin with a sharpie before completing our fish with line patterns. 

Tjanpi Desert Weavers

We learned about a group of Australian artists called the Tjanpi Desert Weavers. Tjanpi means grass.
These artists use materials collected from the lands around them to create beautiful baskets and animal sculptures.
After seeing a few examples of their work we experimented with pipe cleaners and yarn to create our own mini animal sculptures.

Learning about Depth

We created layers of mountains using ripped paper and then added a zig-zag road and trees to show a sense of space.
We discussed that our paintings had a foreground, middle ground, and background.
We finished the mountainscapes by printing a moon and using a pipette to add a snowstorm.

Heart Collages inspired by Jim Dine

Colorful Chalk Cityscapes with Printed lines

Before the break, we learned about different types of lines, for this project we discussed how lines go together to make shapes. We learned that everything is made out of shapes and lines. We then read the book Wow! City!, by Robert Neubecker and looked at a few Cityscapes by Paul Klee, James Rizzi, and Brian Whelan and talked about the shapes we see the most of in a city and what types of lines make those shapes. 

* The students were given rectangular pieces of thick cardstock to print straight lines and turn them into cityscapes. 

* The final step was color. We went back and looked at the illustrations of Wow! City! and the paintings by Klee, Rizzi, and Whelan and discussed how colorful the city can be. 

* Students were given chalk pastels, which they dipped in little cups of water to keep the dust down, and they filled in their cities with lots of color. 

Pinch Pots

Always a favorite, we just finished our pinch pots.

Finished

"A drawing is simply a line going for a walk" - Paul Klee

Taking a Line for a Walk

We continued our conversation about different types of lines and then learned about the artist Paul Klee. One of his famous quotes is "A line is a dot that went for a walk", we took this quote and based our line drawings on taking a dot for a walk. We then read the book The Line Sophie Drew by Peter and Susan Barrett. In this book, all of Sophie's friends use their imaginations to guess what Sophie's line is going to be a picture of. We then went back to our line drawings and started imagining what they could be. 

Lines

I introduced "Sammy the Snake" to the Rowe artists and talked about how he likes to slither in many different types of lines. We talked about how everything is made up of lines put together.
To start this unit the students were given a base and a handful of colorful lines (strips of paper)
and were tasked to create a 3-dimensional sculpture from the 2-dimensional lines.

What inspires you?

We talked about where artists get their inspiration before working on the seashell landscapes. To continue with this concept, the Rowe artists came up with their own inspiration and created a piece of art, focusing on a balanced composition and the use of a horizon line.