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We have creative students, and our teachers and staff help them to develop their skills over time. Here you can see some of the results of their work. A special thanks for Art Teacher Yutaka Houlette for gathering this collection together. Please click the link to see the portfolios:
Grades K-2 Dream House Collage
Collages of dream houses The students expanded on their drawing ideas by creating collages of their dream houses. Even though the context and details of the their houses seemed to be influenced by the slides they had seen, the basic formula of a triangle sitting on a square was still pretty prevalent – maybe because these shapes are so basic and easy to create.
Grades K-2 Dream House Drawing
Drawings of dream houses When asked to draw houses, most suburban dwelling American children will draw a triangle sitting on a square that has a rectangular door and square window in it. Seeing the ubiquity of these drawings made me wonder if this assemblage of shapes represents a realistic depiction of the houses children see, or a child’s natural inclination to create a house composed of only the essentials. To try and expand the students’ architectural vocabulary, we viewed a slide show of a wide variety of human made houses and animal made shelters. After viewing these, I asked the students to draw what their dream house would look like.
Grades K-2 Machine Collages and Drawing
Collages of machines After making sketches of machines from their imaginations the students created collages of machines. The materials the students worked with were paper, old National Geographic magazines, scissors and glue. In order for their collages to have the look of a machine, the students were asked that the images they cut out were not easily identifiable and that all of their cutout shapes be connected. They were also encouraged to use a wide variety of shape and for their shape to overlap.
Drawings of collages of machines For the next step in the machine project the students were given paper and color pencils and asked to draw their collages. If students finished early, they were allowed to embellish their drawings to make them look more machine-like.
Grades K-2 Maps
Maps In conjunction with what one of the first grade classes was focusing on, our next project was about maps. We started by looking at various interesting and unconventional maps that were part of a traveling art show titled Maps: Finding our place in the world. The students were then given paper and pencil and asked to draw a map from one of the following categories: a map of their house, a map of their neighborhood, a map of an imaginary country. The next class, the students were given watercolor paints to fill in the shapes they had drawn.
Grades K-2 Miro
Miro line hunt We started the year off by looking at the whimsical paintings of Spanish artist, Joan Miro. Miro makes visual art seem like an inexhaustibly fun explorations of lines and shapes, almost in the spirit of a child. I hoped that in his work, the students would recognize energy and a visual vocabulary similar to theirs and be inspired to make the most of it, in the way Miro did.
The first assignment was to identify the various lines and shapes that were used in two of Miro’s paintings. The students did this by looking closely and drawing the lines and shapes they saw onto separate sheets of paper. Their findings were compiled onto one large poster that was displayed in the classroom.
Green lines red shapes Using the lines and shapes from their collaboratively created poster, the students created drawings by following simple rules: all line must be drawn in green, all shapes must be drawn in red and all shapes must be connected by lines.
Miro plants For their final project, the students were asked to connect all shapes with lines like in their previous assignment but were allowed to be free with their color choices. By having their lines stem out from a brown pot like shape, their drawings became suggestive of plants.
Grades K-2 Moorish Tiles
Moorish tiles During Spanish heritage week, the students looked at Islamic architecture that flourished in parts of Spain under the Moors between 711-1492. The most famous surviving example of this architecture in Spain is the Alhambra castle, which is located in the southern part of the country. Through looking at many images of the castle, the students began to identify an important aspect of Islamic architecture: symmetrical patterns. Each of the students created their own symmetrical pattern by folding a square piece of paper twice and repeating whatever they drew in one quadrant in all of the others. Most students stared in the middle of the paper and expanded outwards to create interesting, blooming patterns.
Grades K-2 Portraits
Portraits Before having the students begin drawing portraits of their classmates that were sitting across from them, I played a two-minute song and asked them to silently study each other’s faces. During this time, I encouraged them to hone in on aspects of individual features: the size and shape of the nose, whether they could see their classmates’ teeth when they smiled, the thickness of their eyebrows… To create the drawings, the students were given crayons that had their paper coverings peeled away. This allowed them to use of the sides to evenly shade. Although there were some students who took their classmates depiction of them too personally, most students enjoyed seeing their portraits. I think that the somewhat awkward depiction of some of the features shows that the students were really trying to work out how to draw what they were seeing and not just drawing what they thought a face should look like.
Grades 3-5 Poster
Personal message with portrait The two main focuses of this projects were typography and self portraiture. Each student was asked to think of something that they had seen and had had a strong emotional reaction too. These thoughts were then turned into messages in which the main words were written in a way that illustrated the definition of the word. The students then drew portraits of themselves expressing the emotions in their poster
Grades 3-5 Personal Flag
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