It has been a long time since we spent a full five week session on one project, but this collage project was definitely worth it. All three levels did the same project, all had great results. We started out learning some watercolor techniques to create painted paper that would later become whales, seals, sharks, tropical […]
For the past few weeks, several of my classes have been working on a project based on the illustrations in the book, This Jazz Man. The illustrations depict famous jazz musicians using mixed media collage. Collage looks deceptively easy. It actually requires a lot of planning ahead and thinking of shapes in a different way. […]
This project was based on the book Drum Dream Girl by Margarita Engle. This story was inspired by the true story of Millo Castro Zaldarriaga, a Chinese-African-Cuban girl who broke Cuba’s taboo against female drummers and went on to become a world renown musician, even playing for President Roosevelt in New York. We drew our […]
At least once a year, I try do do a mixed media collage. I think there is a lot of value in having students see how they can combine several small projects into one final piece. This project took three weeks to complete, but I think it was well worth it. There is a whole […]
If you haven’t hear of Rex Ray, do a quick Google search. You will see a ton of beautiful paintings and collages. For the past two weeks, we have been working on a project based on his amazing work. The first week, we focused on creating painted papers to use in our collages. The big […]
We did this clay project while we were doing our marigolds. We started out by painting square sheets of tag board for the background. Our goal was to create a subtle color change, gradually transitioning from one color to another. Then we got out the clay. For this project, we used Model Magic. This stuff […]
This was the first project for our Mexican Art workshop this summer. I knew this was going to be fun, bright, and cheery. But, I had no idea how absolutely stunning these would turn out! We started out by using sponges and tempera paint to create painted paper for our vases. Then we painted a […]
For the last couple of weeks we have been learning about the German artist, Franz Marc. We looked at several of Marc’s famous blue horses and read the book, The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse by Eric Carle. Carle uses painted paper in his illustrations, so we began this project by creating our own […]
I forgot to post these last week. My apologies! Last week, we learned about Paul Klee and his painting, Senecio (1922). We first painted our backgrounds with tempera paint, using a mat board scrap to apply the paint. While those were drying, we drew “Senecio” on yellow-gold paper using oil pastel and added color with […]
These sweet elephants were worth the wait. We started these last week after reading Elmer. After their drawing was complete, students filled in their elephant with a pattern of their choice. I love some of the original designs they came up with! They added color with markers, cut them out and glued them on black paper. […]
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