Eye on Color

5th grade artist examined the differences between realism and surrealism. Students then used charcoal medium to give shade and depth to a realistic sketch of the human eye, students also used oil pastel medium to create a color wheel inside of the eye, giving it a surreal effect.

To culminate the lesson 5th graders held a debate over which art style was more interesting: Hyper-realism or Surrealism. The class was spilt into research, survey, debate teams and a judge and a jury. Hyper realism was the winner in both the debate and the school survey!

Be sure to check out Hyper real art: paintings with such detail to light and color they appear to be a photograph!

Here is a sample artist:http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/01/hyper-realistic-paintings-by-steve-mills/

Welcome to ART!

This is my welcome to art video :) This was a great introduction to art class, it goes over the basics in a fun way. A major advantage is that I do not have to repeat the "rules" to all 18 of my classes!! 

I have a dream...

Our 5th grade cluster group is participating in a community arts project. This collaborative painted canvas is currently on display at Arts Mon located on High Street. It is a part of the MLK celebration hosted by the group Downtown Morgantown. 

Our piece has collage prints of sheet music from the song Amazing Grace for the background, the foreground has free hand sketch of Martin Luther with the words "I Have a Dream".

Shadow Night Scapes

5th grade created these landscapes. They created a mood painting with shadow and highlights in perspective.

Value Self-Portraits

We started off the year with a K-5 unit of self-portraits. This was 5th grades unit project. They started with photocopied images of themselves. The students learned about tints and shades and used them to create a value painting over top of the photocopy. Students were encouraged to add contrasting highlights and shadows to make the portrait pop. The portraits were then cut out and matted onto a "wordle" background. This was made of a design of words that describe each student.

This is part of a unit that I just finished with a group of 5th graders. We spent time studying the differences in contour and sketching lines. For the contour portion students chose and interesting clip art animal and played with layout, space and composition. Students then filled the background with pattern style contour lines. It turned out to be a cool graphic art piece.

Recycled Robots

This was a very fun project for all involved. As part of my art club students found interesting material to create a "recycled" robot. They gave them names and they all had interesting facts. They turned out to be cool industrial type sculptures.

This year for part of our Native American Unit 5th grade created coil pots. I do not have a kiln so we used air dry clay and then painted them when dry. The students really enjoyed the process and liked learning the pottery lingo.

Ode to Starry Night Mural

My art club recently finished this amazing 4ftx8ft mural with their version of Van Gogh's Starry Night. They enjoyed studying the "vibrations" and movement of the painting. We explored the way a painting can evoke an emotion. I have a great little coffee table book called "The Wisdom of a Starry Night" it shows paintings with a single question prompt. For this one we wrote about what wisdom we could find in this starry night. Some sample responses from my 4th and 5th graders were: "The stars in the sky remind me of how small we really are," "The bright starts remind me that my grandpa is always watching over me," it was a great reflective exersize to go with our mural.

Symmetrically Sketched Spiders

In this lesson my student have been exploring the differences in draing techniques. Sketching and gestrual drawing vs. complex contour designs. For an exercise in sketching students were given one half of a spider and asked to finish the spider using sketching and shading. Student show off what they have learned about value and skethcing before partaking in a contour exersize.

PAPER SCULPTURE

This is a 5th grade lesson that explores how paper can be used for sculpture. We use white on white to study how sclulptural techniques can show space, value and depth in an artwork. We use one small piece as an accent color. We watch a power point that features techniques as well as artists who have created some really amazing works with white paper sculpture. I will try and post my ppt in a box.net file soon. I encourage students to think outside the boz on this one and get very mechanical in their detail work.

SHOE SKETCHES

This is a lesson I do with 5th grade. We start the unit by taking about how important skethcing is to an artist. We talk about realism and what it means in terms of art styles. Then we create sketch books that have 3 sketches of the same think be do a sketch, a contour, and a blind contour drawing of something like an apple. We learn that sketching lines are to determine the best way to draw a subject (lines that can be erased). Contour lines are about the outline or contour of a subject, these lines are very quick and not detailed. Then we do a blind contour, this is always fun, but I teach my students that the point is practice and the way that you arm flows when it hits the paper. The culminating project is using sketching lines and realism to create a 3 point sketch of your own shoe. We do the side first, then the front and lastly the back. We also learn about how a table line inpacts a drawing and we build on the shading skills we learned in 4th grade from the shapley shading lesson. Overall the students enjoyed this because the explaination and practive of how to sketch allowed them to be successful at drawing something realistically. When we feel successful at something we seem to like it:)

CREATE-A-MANDALA

This is a 5th grade lesson. The students usually work on mandala design print outs when they finish their work. So I thought it would be great to have them create their own mandala design. We studied the history of the mandala and how they were used as medatative tools by munks. The students made practice sketches and chose a design. We created and oil and watercolor resist to finish it. This took approx. 2-3 40 minute classes. On the webpage nga.org there is a program that allows students to create their own electronic mandala in a printable form we did this as a wrap up to the lesson, the technology was interesting to the students.

Guitar Art Hero

In this lesson I created an introductory PPT that allows the student to view and learn about 9 different artist. The students fill out a guide that is to help them arrange information about the artists. The students use this guide to help them choose and artist or art period that intrigues them. I did this unit with 5th grade students it, taking approx. 3-4 40 minute classes.

Then the students create a large scale tracing of a guitar outline and use a piece of famous art from art history or from the PPT to use as inspiration for the art that will cover thier guitar. Students create a sketch on the base of the guitar then fill it in with a chosen medium.

I was amazed at how much my students loved the powerpoint. They were talking about their feelings toward the artist styles as well as relating it to history. I loved this unit!

My powerpoint, actual lesson plan, guide sheet and guitar outline can be found at

http://www.box.net/shared/rk5azcv8rl -Guide sheet

http://www.box.net/shared/kyx6kogg20 - PPT