Second grade artists have been learning about Henri Matisse and his beautiful cut paper collages.  They created their own cut paper collage in the style of his “Beasts of the Sea” piece.  They quickly became experts at cutting spirals and finding the beauty in their positive and negative cut shapes.

  Matisse – Beasts of the Sea

Here are two of our collages.

I love to introduce my second graders to the concept of an “eye path” with this lesson.  We talk about ways an artist can make the viewer’s eye move around the artwork – by using color and shape that is carefully placed in the picture.  Then I challenge them to create an eye path of their own as they create their compositions.

This year we spent some time looking at our finished pieces and finding each others’ eye paths.  The conversations at each table were absolutely fabulous – my kiddos were so excited to talk about their work to each other!  We practiced first about the polite way to talk about each others work, and how we might add “constructive criticism” such as “what if you put another shape here” and “my eye wanders off the picture here, could you add another spiral to bring the eye path around the corner”…..and they did it!