Wrapping Up the School Year & The End of the Year Party

You know when you mean to do something, then days turn to weeks or in this case :gulp: months?  I've been meaning to write the last few posts for 4th grade art enrichment now since school ended in June.  I got busy with the summer classes in my masters program, which ended last week and now I'm on vacation penning the last few posts in Florida.  Better late than never!

We finished our Rothko inspired colored paper collages:

For our last class, we decided to do some computer generated art.  Mrs. Luker set up a still life from which to work from. It was neat to see everyone's interpretations on line, pattern, shape and color of the forms:

For our end of the year party, parents brought food and drinks and I brought some colored pastels to draw and paint with outside.  Here's what the students created on the school playground:

Thanks again Art Enrichment parents and students for a fabulous year!   Best of luck at Canaan Middle School!!

Week 18- Drawing for the Pelatonia Blog

This week we continued on our Pelatonia Blog drawings of bikes and bicycle themes.  Mrs. Luker noticed last week, that the kids were focusing more on the cancer aspect of the concept rather than the race itself.   So, we had to redirect their attention to bike race themes instead.  Mrs. Luker had multiple photographs to use as references.    Once they had a new direction, they were off and running with scenes of bike races, patterns, and even a still life of bike elements.  

Next week we'll start our last project of the year, an abstract expressionist inspired collage.  See you then!

Our First Day- Simple Still Life

Since this was our first class together, I thought it would be best to start with some basic drawing skills and set up a still life for the students to draw from. The still life consisted of 4 glass bottles with one light source.



We talked about the size and shape of the objects and how they relate to each other. We went over how to measure and gauge the distance between objects and how the flat sided bottles differ from the round cylindrical bottle shapes. We also talked about foreground, mid-ground and background and how to draw objects that in a way that tells the viewer where the objects are in space.

I briefly went over negative space and how it relates to positive space and how it helps you draw objects. In our still life, the bottles are the positive space and the space around them is the negative space.

Here's some of the students work:




Next week we'll go over shading with light and dark with a light source and another simple still life.

In the future we'll do some projects, including watercolor, painting with either acrylic or oil on canvas, and also sculpture. We'll probably tackle some of these larger projects over the course of a few weeks after the first of the year. Between now and then we'll cover the basics of drawing, light and dark, and maybe introduce some color theory.