Romero Britto‘s colorful and bold style appeals to children and many people of all ages. Why do I love Romero Britto? Because he’s making things that are HAPPY and the world needs more of that. It works great to tie in with the study of patterns. His art is full of color. Kids can relate to it. His artwork has been made into many products, which shows ways artists can make a living as a contemporary artist and the potential … Read more…
Visual textures are implied textures you can see such as cloudy, shiny, and windy and can be drawn as such. The opposite of visual texture is tactile texture which is texture that you can feel. Feathers, yarn, ribbon and tissue paper are used to add real texture in this sculpture project featured in this blog post. There are many ways to teach about texture including metal tooling, clay and sculpture (like you will see here.) This bird in a nest art … Read more…
My creative and wonderful blogging friend, Phyl, has posted several times about her toothpaste batik process.  I have admired the results for years and decided to try it last year for our Wild about the Arts Fine Arts Night.  I was hesitant to try because of the logistics.  It was not a quick and easy project, but I loved the process and I loved that it was so “different” than other things my students have experienced. These were made with 4th … Read more…
It has been several weeks since our Fine Arts Night and I have been waiting until things settled down here to write all about it. Many, many thanks to my co-worker Katie McEnaney for taking photographs of the event! “Wild About the Arts” Fine Arts Night We had our first ever Fine Arts Night.  The night combined musical performances, an art show and art activities to celebrate the arts!  We decided on an animal theme. We displayed one artwork from … Read more…
My 3rd grade classes learned about African Korhogo Cloth paintings. They had been studying Africa in their Social Studies class.  Here are some of the resources we used:  information about the cloth paintings and a couple of YouTube videos– Take a Look at African Korhogo Cloth and Senufo Art (although I do caution you that there is some tribal nudity at the beginning of this documentary in the intro, so start it after 20 seconds in).  There is a really cool tribal dance portion … Read more…
Here is a really fun twist on self-portraits!  I teach the grades K-4/5 at my school and the middle school art teacher is in charge of grades 5/6-8.  We have a new art teacher at the middle school level this year and her name is Jayne Baitinger-Peterson.  She comes to our school with over 30 years teaching experience at the elementary level and she has been enjoying the change with middle school youth.  She gave me permission to share these … Read more…
For Earth Day, my 4th & 5th grade class drew endangered trees and birds using oil pastels. The entire lesson took about 3-4 class periods to finish. The students each used a picture of their tree or bird to recreate on a piece of 9″x12″ paper. We talked a little bit about layering and blending colors with the oil pastels. We were able to go outside on Earth Day to enjoy the sunshine while drawing. Our Earth Day committee came … Read more…
With all the fancy projects an art teacher can find on Pinterest, sometimes it’s good to go back to the basics. Simple drawing and painting of familiar subjects. This week my students drew art manekins. You could see much more concentration in the students than while doing other projects. I was looking through the folders on my computer and found these animal watercolor paintings my students had made last year. For more watercolor lessons, check out these old posts: How … Read more…
This summer I taught a one week art workshop called Artsy Animals. The camp had kids going in to grades 1-4 and it took place for 3 hours every day. Now camp was much more laid back than regular art class, so we did not accomplish *as much* as 3 hours of school time, but I think the kids had a really good time. We made Shrinky Dink necklaces! Each student got one sheet of Shrinky Dinks Crystal Clear paper. … Read more…
Fruit and Flowers: I colored in the sketch that I showed you here. I mostly used colored pencils, watercolor pencils and watercolor paints. A Mouse: My 5th/6th graders are painting animals and my go-to demo is always a mouse or hamster. I love cute rodents. The kids are always astounded when I show them how to make furry texture with a fan brush! So fun. Do you have go-to images you use when demonstrating techniques? Me: Here I am at … Read more…
