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.

Seashell Landscapes

We started this lesson by talking about where artists find Inspiration. We talked about how living in Maine and especially in Yarmouth, we are near the ocean. A fun summertime activity, that many of us do, is walking on the beach and collecting shells, we used this as our inspiration.

We used pencils, then, sharpies to make our lines stand out, oil pastels and tempera cakes to finish off the Seashell landscapes.

Welcome to the Rowe Art Room!

This year in art, we will focus on the exploration of materials and learning about the first four 

Elements of Art: 

Color, Shape, Line, and Texture

We started the year off by using the Primary colors to paint the rainbow. We started to experiment with color mixing to create the missing colors. 

The first-grade artists listened to the book, The Dot, by Peter H. Reynolds, and created their own dots which are on display in the hallway out to the art portable. 

The kindergarten artists listened to the book, I'm Not Just a Scribble, by Diane Alber, and drew their own "scribble friends" with crayon and ink.  

Both grades are now working on drawing seashells. 

We learned about the Horizon line (because shells do not fly in the sky) and Contour lines (because artists describe shapes with contour lines, not words)

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!