More of My Art

During the huge snowstorm this week, I was stuck inside my apartment all by myself. To keep myself busy, I painted this picture. This is now a last minute Christmas present for my parents. I have never painted anything like this before. I never knew how hard it was to paint fog. I think I have learned a lot while painting this.

Having three snow days this week, gave me plenty of time to finish the painting and frame it. This painting was definately a challenge, but I think it turned out well.

My Art

I have been working on this painting for the last few weeks and it is finally done. It's not the style I normally paint in, but this painting is not for me. It is a gift for someone who likes things a little more traditional. I tried to tone down my normal "wild" style for this one.

It's always hard to say goodbye to a painting though. At least I know it has a good home.

Van Gogh City Scapes, 2nd Grade

I found this idea the other day on Art Smarts. I had to adapt it a little in order to get it done in one hour, but I think the results were wonderful. I showed the students Van Gogh's "Starry Night", which the students loved. These were made out of tissue paper. The students tore strips of tissue paper and glued it onto black paper. Then, white paint was used to draw the swirls into the sky. Students then drew a city onto black paper and cut it out. This was glued down onto their page. Windows were drawn in with white oil pastels.

I just love these!

Number Paintings, Kindergarten

This is a great project for the little Kindergartners. They have recently been learning their numbers, so this project was perfect for them. A few years ago, I saw this project in the magazine, "School Arts," which is a wonderful resource by the way. Basically, you have students use oil pastels to write numbers all over their page. Some numbers can be big, some small. Also, numbers should not be written in a row, but all over their paper.

I actually have them draw one number one, two number two's, three number three's, etc. They do this until they get to the number ten. This is so they fill up their entire page with lots of numbers. Otherwise, they may only write a few numbers and say they are done. After the numbers are written, they use watercolors for the background. This is such a simple project, but I love the results.

Snowmen Again, Kindergarten

Alright, so I know that I have already posted on this project once before, but those pictures were from last year. These are from this year, and honestly I think they are better. Last year I was a little afraid of giving Kindergartners paint, and the project was a little more structured. This year, I gave them more freedom with it. As a result, I think they are more creative.
Some students gave their snowmen hair, scarves, necklaces, earrings, etc. I just love their creativity.

Closeup Snowmen, 1st and 2nd Grade

I had my first and second graders create snowmen this week. This was perfect because our first snow of the year happened today. These are closeups of a snowman. Instead of drawing three circles on top of each other, we zoom in and have only a head and body. We drew everything in crayon first, then used tempera paint to color everything.

I can not take full credit for this project. I first saw it on Art Projects for Kids, but I have seen it posted on several other sites since then. This is such a wonderful project. The Kids love it and I love it too.

Optical Illusions, 5th Grade

Today we created Optical Illusions with one of my fifth grade classes. Some students loved this project, but others found it very hard. Unlike most of my art projects, this one involved using our mathematical brains. These look really cool when all of them are hung together on the wall.

To create these, we started with a square piece of paper. First we drew a grid using rulers. Then we traced three circles onto the grid. Now for the hard part, color in every other space black. This seems easy, but it really takes thought. When you get to the circles, you may not be coloring the entire square, but a small piece of the square. No two black spaces should touch each other. There are some mistakes in these, but they still turned out awesome.

I did not come up with this lesson myself. I found it on one of my favorite websites, Oodles of Art.

Teepees, 5th Grade

My fifth graders have been learning a lot about Native Americans recently, so I thought it was the perfect time to create Teepees. We decorated our teepees using Native American designs and symbols. To help the students with this, I brought in lots of examples.

The students folded their teepees to make them stand up. We folded our teepees eight times. To make the teepee look like animal hide, I brought in yellow ochre watercolors and we did a simple wash over the whole thing.

Frogs, 1st Grade

I did these frogs with my first graders. The bodies were made out of paper cups, which we covered with green tissue paper. The legs and mouth were cut out of green construction paper. The tongue was made out of a red pipe cleaner and a fly was stapled to the end.

These turned out really cute. I let my students decorate their frogs with lots of fun designs and patterns. I just love how each frog seems to have a unique personality.