Mosaic Trees

Another idea found on Pinterest........ Loretta Grayson is the artist who inspired this lesson, I love her colorful art.  See lots here and more info. about her here.

The original on Pinterest were small square paintings that looked like they were done on canvas w/ acrylics, but after reading Loretta's blog - she uses a wonderful combination of pastels and paint, etc.  Because of resources, I decided instead to do the project as a paper mosaic.  It took 2 sessions, and I think they turned out great.
Steps:
1. cover 8x8" tagboard w/ mosaic paper squares
2. draw circle on 4x4" paper, cover w/ mosaic squares on opposite side, then cut out circle.
3. draw black tree branches and glue onto circle, then glue onto background.

These were done by 5th/6th graders:)

Cleaning up........

It's almost end of March, and still, I'm reminding students proper clean-up techniques.  Who am I kidding, they're kids, of course they still needs reminders.

P.S. Do you use these palettes too?  I'm not a fan b/c they're hard to clean, but I also hate using disposable stuff like small condiment cups, wax paper palettes, etc.  Tried pill boxes once, but I bought the circular kind which were impossible to clean.  Saw them at the $1 store so I couldn't resist, I bought 8 of them:(

What's your FAVORITE paint palette for 20+ kids?

ScratchArt

Have been wanting to do a scratch-art lesson for ages, and finally tried it.  My high school students enjoyed it a lot.  I got the idea of starting with a face from Nena at  The Painted Apple.  Her students create marvelous work and I'm so glad she shares it in her blog!

I gave the students magazines and calendars and told them that their subject had to be an animal or a person.  I also showed them my example which was a frog.  Not surprisingly, all of them chose animals.  Then I made a color photocopy of the animal.  They cut
Here are the steps we took:
1.  Draw the whole animal in pencil on scratch paper.  This is the practice drawing.
2. I made color copies of each animal and students cut out ONLY the face of the animal and glued it onto their scratchboard.  (By the way, I was surprised to find that my small local art supply shop sold 24"x36" sheets of scratchboard for $3.00 ea.  I really didn't want to take the time to have the students make their own.)  (Also, by the way, you don't have to make color copies of animals.  I did so because I didn't want the originals ruined by having face cut out.)
3.  Students used edge of paperclip, or toothpick, or side of scissors to scratch the animal and background.  They chose their preferred tool.