ATC Collection

Summer art lessons are over, and I ended up with a fabulous collection of Artist Trading Cards (ATC's). The kids also made little envelopes for their trading cards, and brought them back and forth to art class for barter and fun.

Henri Rousseau Quote

Image via Wikipedia

"If you remove these lines in the painting, the colors are no longer effective."

Henri Rousseau -French 1844-1910

Giraffes

This giraffe project was inspired by a lesson found at http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/lessons/lessons.html. The lesson was Submitted by: Tracy Albert May, Lesson Idea: It's a Jungle Out There (Henri Rousseau) .

For our version of the project, we did not use the black ink for the batik effect because we didn't have time.

First make a frame for the picture.

Draw giraffe.

Outline with black marker and add jungle leaves, etc. and border decorations.
We colored ours with pastels. The pastels really pop on colored construction paper.

Super Thanks to summer art students: Clio, Molly, Brigido, Jennifer, Julia for sharing their artwork below!

A giraffe miracle at the San Francisco Zoo.

Henri Matisse Quote

Image via Wikipedia

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.

Henri Matisse, France 1869-1954

Homage to Matisse Goldfish

Image by COLARES&ARTE via Flickr

For this lesson, we studied the painting "Goldfish" by Matisse. We noticed the prominent oval shapes that exist in the painting, and talked about how the ovals helped us see the water in the container. First we drew w/ pencil, starting with the container.

Then we drew the table.

Then kids added their fish and outlined w/ a sharpie.

Then for effect, the picture was painted white and other colors were added on top of the white. We used tempera paint.

Super Big Thanks to summer art students: Bijou, Paige, Lizzy, Michelle, Haddie, Drew, Julia, Jennifer, Siena, Devin, Trinity.

Nature Sketchbook

Image by cobalt123 via Flickr

Nature Sketchbook Lesson:

We started by talking about shadows and looking for an object's shadow when placed on white paper. We discovered that the shadow is darkest at the point where it touches the object and the shadow gets lighter the farther away it is from the object. Then we experimented shading, hatch and cross-hatch lines for shadows. Nature objects were given to each table group. We make a big deal about respecting the objects because they're real and fragile. (By the way, the lizard below is dead. I live in the country and flat dead lizards are surprisingly easy to come by??? The boys love them along with the bird and gopher skulls. I also make a point of sharing with the students that I never "steal" a nest or an egg. All my objects have been found on the ground and obviously abandoned.)

Beautiful feather with fabulous shadows, Clio!

Super thanks to summer art kids:

Clio, Bijou, Julia, Jennifer, Paige, Lizzy, Sam, Kahler, Leilanna, Johnathan, Michelle,

Molly , Drew , Haddie