Dancing Ballerinas!

Cover of Degas (Basic Art)

Big THANKS to Miss Julie for posting this lesson!! I did this lesson in many different classrooms and some of the teachers even used the art for their Mother's Day cards.

Before the lesson, we talked about Degas and looked at some of his artworks depicting ballet dancers.
Miss Julie gives a great tutorial on the lesson, and I used the circle and triangle template as she suggested.

Thank You Santa Rosa Elementary Artists!!

Egyptian Art Book- PDF Download

Our 6th grade students study Egypt in Social Studies, so I decided to create a PDF art lesson, which you can purchase here for $6! Directions include drawing instructions for a Mummy Cat, Egyptian Eye, Scarab Beetle, Asp Snake, and Pyramid Landscape. The lessons are super easy to incorporate into a typical busy school day. No special materials needed. With the step by step directions, teachers without any arts background will feel comfortable teaching these directed drawing lessons, or copy the directions for groups of students and they can even do them on their own!

Big thanks to Santa Rosa Elementary 6th graders!!

Miro People

Image by kamikazecactus via Flickr

I finally got to teach this MIRO PEOPLE art lesson. Big thanks to Deep Space Sparkle and Miss Tabarcea for sharing their Miro art lesson examples.

We used black crayon to outline. (Sorry kids, no pencil first.....Can you teachers hear the audible "awwwww" right now?) Then painted with watercolors.

See the nifty little watercolor palette to the right of the artists above and below? These are so easy to store and something about their tiny round size makes me think the kids treat them a bit more carefully than the usual box sets they're used to. They're currently priced @ $1.29 and I got them here.

Thank you Santa Rosa Academic Academy students!!

Frida Kahlo is a favorite of mine, but the pain in much of her art (& heart) can be a scary subject for kids. Then, when I came across a Frida mural lesson that Laura had posted on her wonderful blog called Painted Paper, I was inspired to do melon still lifes with my students based on Frida's painting called Viva la Vida.

This lesson was done with white crayon and oil pastels on blue paper. Because of time, we only did three melons.
First we drew our still life with pencil on scratch paper.
Then we drew our still life with a white crayon on blue paper. The white crayon doesn't show under the pastels and it saves the kids from making messy art because a number of kids get carried away erasing too many lines.

Step 1: Large oval for back melon.Step 2: Add an "open mouth with jagged teeth" for the top of the open melon.

Step 3: Draw a "U" shape under jagged-teeth mouth.

Step 4: Draw slice of watermelon in front.

Step 5: Add table line in the background.
Then color!

Great Job Santa Rosa Academic Academy, 2nd, 3rd, & 4th graders!!!