Winter Art Projects

Ringing in the New Year….and looking back at a few of our December “wintery” art projects!

Second grade Matisse Winter Collages. After learning about the brightly colored collages created by Henri Matisse, second graders painted paper with dots and learned how to do some fancy cutting to create their Matisse inspired collages.  Once they got the hang of using both the positive and negative space from their cut trees, their collages really came to life.

Third grade Colorful Candy Canes.  Third grade artists were challenged to use as many different color families to color their canes.  See if you can find: warm/cool, complementary, primary, secondary, rainbow, and of course…their own favorite color combinations!

Fourth grade Zentangle Trees.  Fourth graders practiced their zentangle skills as well as working with different media – a salt/watercolor wash and some tricky tape tearing for their trees.

Fifth grade radial art snowflakes.  Fifth grade artists explored radial art patterns while creating these colorful “designer snowflakes”.

Parents!  Many of these pieces can be found on our on-line art gallery ARTSONIA.  Here’s the LINK.

STEAM and ART = BEAUTY!

Georgetown’s Art and Steam teachers collaborated on a very cool project.  Our Kinders and First graders were challenged in Mrs. Totten’s STEAM Studio to design and build their perfect paint brush.  (See the project in STEAM class here.) They thought about the kinds of marks they wanted to make with their brushes and created brushes that would dab, draw, and make different types of lines.

STEAM Brushes – ready to paint.

Their colorful brushes were put to the test in Mrs. Brouwer’s art class.  First grade artists created an abstract landscape with their newly built brushes.

First step – a little texture rubbing.

Step two – putting those brushes to work with paint!

A little black paint to outline – and beautiful landscapes by First Graders are complete.

Kindergarten artists were also excited to create with their STEAM brushes.  We explored the work of Eric Carle, and created a background of water for our darling Eric Carle inspired yellow ducks.

We wrapped up our Steam/Art Brush Project with a discussion about the brushes and how well they worked.  Our First Grade and Kindergarten students had some great ideas to improve their brushes, including using clothes pins to hold cotton balls on the brushes so they could change the cotton balls when they got gooey with paint.  Many wanted to go back to Steam class and figure out ways they could design ways to clean their brushes to re-use them, along with attaching more objects to the brush to make different painted lines.  This was a great thinking + creating project, with beautiful results!

 

Let It Snow!

Kindergarten artists learned about landscapes while creating these sweet little snowscapes.  They also learned a fancy new art word: collage – meaning “to glue” in French!

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Find more of our “Let It Snow” collages at Georgetown’s ARTSONIA art gallery here.

Thanks to Krokotak for this Snowy Day Collage project!

 

Kindergarten India Elephants

IMG_6916The cultural focus this year in art class is Asia, and the Kindergarteners are focusing on the country of India. There is a tradition in India that happens every year called the Elephant Festival. The elephants are painted with beautiful colors and designs. The students learned interesting facts about elephants from India and compared them to elephants from Africa. Did you know that elephants from India are smaller than elephants from Africa? The artists created their own elephants by sponge painting gray paper to create texture that looked like wrinkly elephant skin. They used their painted paper to create these wonderful elephants. Their favorite part was picking out the beautiful jewel for their elephant to wear on it’s head.IMG_6914 IMG_6913 IMG_6911IMG_6910IMG_6889IMG_6888IMG_6887IMG_6871

This project was inspired by the elephant project from the blog ‘Art with Mr. Giannetto.’

Learning Goals:

I can create texture.

I can create a collage.

 

 

2nd Grade Tigers

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After learning about the life and art of Henri Rousseau, 2nd graders at Georgetown created these ferocious tigers in the style of Rousseau.  They learned that Rousseau liked to paint jungle scenes with wild animals even though he had never been to the jungle or had ever seen a wild animal. First the artists drew the tiger and painted it. Then they painted and cut out flowers and leaves to create a jungle scene. These tigers turned out great even though none of these artists had ever been to the jungle either!

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See more of our ferocious tigers at our Artsonia On-Line Art Gallery!

There are lots of tiger projects out there on art blogs – we’d like to thank Alum Creek Elementary School’s Artsonia page for our project inspiration! See their page here.

 

Second Grade Matisse Windows

Second grade artists have been exploring the collage art of Henri Matisse.  They learned that in 1949, Matisse began one of the greatest projects of his life…a chapel for the Dominican sisters in the town of Vence, France.  He designed every part of the Chapelle du Rosaire, including the beautiful stained glass windows.  Our Matisse window collages are inspired by his “Christmas Eve” piece, and the second graders worked hard to create an eye path, using color and shape, that leads the eye around the collage.

Christmas_Eve_1952 Matisse Window “Christmas Eve”

 

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As our assessment for this project, second graders did a “Gallery Walk” around the room, admiring each other’s work.  They wrote comments about the pieces they were viewing, and there were great conversations about eye path, shape, and color!

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Kindergarten Fireflies

Kindergarten artists created these fireflies in the style of Eric Carle to support our school SPARK project where we raised money to send solar powered lanterns to teachers in Uganda. Each teacher in our building read the story The Lonely Firefly by Eric Carle to introduce SPARK to the students. Kindergarteners learned about Eric Carle’s art and began the project by painting paper. They then used their painted paper to cut out the parts of their fireflies. The students worked hard on their fireflies and they turned out beautiful!

 Read more about our SPARK, Spread A Little Light for the Nyaka School in Uganda,   here.