Art Show 2019

Exploring a new art form: Artist Books

I shared with the Rowe artists one of my favorite classes I took while in college. It was called bookmaking. They thought it was funny that I wasn't sure what to expect when I started. I showed the class all of the sample books I made throughout the course including; a normal looking signature book, a book made from a cardboard box with a hole puncher, an accordion book, a "fancy" fold accordion book, and a tunnel book. There was lots of excitement about all these books and talk about how they were not the typical looking book you would find in the library or the book store. We then set out to make a pocket fold accordion book.

This is not one of ours but is a good example of what a pocket accordion book looks like on the inside. 

Many students were excited about the "fancy" folded accordion book I showed them. This is an example from online, it shows how to fold the paper. To make a book with this fold, you fold multiple squares of paper and then glue the square sides together to create a long fancy-folded accordion book. 

Free choice painting

Painting Pinch Pots

Kindergarten artists painted with watercolors and brought their pitch pots home the same day.
We talked about how these pinch pots would make great holders for small trinkets.
The students came up with some great ideas of what to use it for; including keeping those tiny LEGO’s that always get lost, pennies, marbles or earrings.

First-grade artists used red, yellow, and blue underglazes to paint their pinch pots.
These will go in the kiln one more time and will be food and water safe.

Pinch Pots

Hard at work on Pinch Pots

Hard at work on animals

Students chose the medium for adding color to their animals. 

Learning to draw what you see ....Using your "Artist Eyes"

This week we talked about how amazing our brains are in that we can all have little pictures in our heads of what things look like. This helps us as artists to draw from our imagination and our memory. Sometimes this can trick artists when drawing what we see. We talked about using our "artist eyes" to really look at pictures of animals and draw the animal we see not the picture we have in our brains. We used images from my favorite book Zoo-Ology, to practice drawing at least four different animals by using our artist eyes and breaking them into shapes. Next week, each artist will pick an animal for a final painting.

Finished Rousseau Jungles

The Rousseau Jungles are now finished up.
We looked back at Henri Rousseau's Jungle paintings and talked about what was missing. An animal of course. Students chose one animal to draw, cut and glue down to their jungles for the final touch.

Fruits and Flowers

This week we added Fruits and Flowers to our Rousseau inspired jungles by mixing Red & Yellow to make orange and White & Red to make Pink. These jungles are so colorful!

Rousseau Jungle Green

After talking about the French Painter Henri Rousseau we started our own jungles by mixing a variety of greens using the two Primary colors Yellow and Blue.  

We used the different types of Lines to create Jungle Vines and then added grass and leaves.

  

Catching up!! Busy Fall!

It has been a busy start to the school year. The Rowe artists have been very flexible while waiting for the art room to be ready.
We have learned about color, line, pattern and texture.  Here are some snapshots into the start of the year in art.

Perspective

This week we learned about Perspective. We talked about how when an object is far away, it looks small, but, when it gets closer it looks bigger.  We learned the term Vanishing Point and looked at some examples and then got started creating our own vanishing roads, rivers and paths.

Architecture Unit cont.

Architecture: Building Design

For this lesson, we talked about how art is all around us and how creative people help make our lives more interesting.  We thought up all the different ways that art is used in our everyday life, from the clothes we wear to the buildings and houses we live and work in. We focused in on Architects and what they do and looked at creative works from Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry. 

We then used "lines" (popsicle sticks) to design our own buildings.

Self Portraits

We have been learning about Proportion while creating our self-portraits. You may see your young artists adding light lines going through the middle of their portraits. We used these lines to help figure out where all of the parts of the face go. 

We started this unit with a practice portrait that went home at the beginning of March. We are now working on our larger and final piece. 

Pop Art Heart Collages

While some artists were finishing up the Folk Art Landscapes, others created torn paper heart collages using Pop Artist Jim Dine as an inspiration.

Folk Art Landscapes continued

Tracing pencil lines with Sharpie and adding color with oil pastels. 

Folk Art Landscapes

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 pencil and tracing with sharpie. Our next step will be to color in with oil pastels and watercolor paints.

Snowmen shadows

While the Pinch Pots were firing we had fun learning about negative space, symmetry and shadows by cutting out snowmen and flipping them over to show the shadow. We added a moon as the light source.

Clay Pinch Pots

First grade artists used white clay to create a pinch pot and had the option to add more details with extra clay, many chose to create faces or animals.

Kindergarten artists used red clay to create a pinch pot and could change the shape of the pot.

Complementary Color Patterns

This week we talked about a new color group called Complementary colors. The Rowe artists chose a pair of Complementary colors and used recycled cardboard tubes to stamp patterns.

A Very Thankful Turkey

Each student cut out a turkey feather and wrote one thing they are thankful for and then filled in the rest of their feather with line pattern. The feathers were then glued down around a turkey body and it hanging int he Rowe School hallway.

Art Exploration Stations

Between longer projects, I like to give the students some Art Exploration. I turn each table into a station that we cycle through.

This week the Stations were: Collage, Magnetic Line Design, Texture Rubbing drawings, and free
                                               draw with a few How to Draw Animal sheets if they needed ideas.

Here are some photos of what it looked like:
 

Adventures in Printmaking

Fall is upon us and leaves are all around! Like most artists, we have used our surroundings as inspiration and did Texture rubbings of leaves. 

We continued with the subject of leaves while also exploring new ways of making copies or prints. The Rowe artists first practiced drawing four types of leaves, and then picked one to create a foam plate for block Printmaking.

We also explored Monoprinting with chalk on water and drawing with a q-tip into a painted plate and pulling a single print. 

Here are some examples.