More Picasso Inspired Pumpkins

Pablo Picasso Pumpkins

It's harvest time and the pumpkins are ready to go! Some of my first graders are ahead of schedule so they get to make an extra project. Since we've been studying the artist Pablo Picasso and his painting Weeping Woman, our project was to create a colorful, and kind of crazy, pumpkin. We used oil pastel and watercolor paints to create some awesome artwork. Here are a couple examples.

New Art Contest

Sharpen your colored pencils, take pen in hand, and squirt some more paint on your palette! The 2010 River of Words Indiana Contest is in full swing!

Each year in affiliation with The Library of Congress Center for the Book, River of Words conducts a free international poetry and art contest for youth on the theme of WATERSHEDS. The contest is designed to help youth explore the natural and cultural history of the place they live, and to express, through poetry and art what they discover. The contest is open to any child in the world, from 5-19 years of age. Older student must have not yet completed high school. There is no charge to enter.

River of Words is an excellent opportunity for science, art and literature classrooms to strengthen their skills and make connections between the watershed theme and their artistic talents.

The deadline for contest entries is December 1, 2009. Entries are first judged in the international RoW contest and winners are announced in April 2010. The Indiana state contest is sponsored by Indiana Project WET , the Environmental Education Association of Indiana (EEAI) and the Indiana Center for the Book. All Indiana poetry and artwork will be judged at the state level in May and winners will be announced in June 2010.

Entry forms and complete contest guidelines can be found at www.riverofwords.org/contest/index.html.

While I won't be doing this contest in my class, I would be glad to talk with your child about their ideas, drawings, or paintings for this contest!

More Crazy Faces in Progress with our artist Pablo Picasso

More Gradation with 2nd Graders and our artist Peter Max

Kindergartners fly away in a bubble!

This week all the kindergartners were lucky enough to meet the Bubble Farmer. This incredible farmer grows bubbles. The students really enjoy her presentation. The Bubble Farmer inspired our latest project. I posed the question to my students that if they could go anywhere in the world in a bubble where would it be? They gave answers like the park, grandma's house, Disney World, and the beach.

More Pablo Picasso Inspired Crazy Faces

1st Graders Start Making Crazy Faces

All my first grade classes started the week by looking at a painting by Pablo Picasso called Weeping Woman.

The students came up with lots of interesting ideas about "What's going on in this painting?" We talked about the different colors and how Picasso liked to make things a little crazy. We then began making our own crazy faces like Pablo Picasso. Each student picked out a colored sheet of construction paper for a background. Then they drew each facial feature on a separate small white paper that they could cut out and glue on their construction paper. They have come up with some very creative crazy faces so far.

2nd Graders Start Fall Leaves with Gradation

All my 2nd are starting a project this week about the color change that happens with leaves. We talk about the different colors and how they change slowly. A slow, gradual change from one color to another is called gradation. We looked at the artwork of Peter Max who is a master at gradation. Here is Peter Max artwork:

This is a picture of what our final project may look like:

And this picture shows a couple of students painting their gradations using the wet-on-wet watercolor technique. The students really liked using a soaking wet paper to paper on. It presented them with new challenges and a new idea of what paper can do. Who knew that you could soak a paper and not ruin it!?

1st Graders Make Monoprints inspired by Helen Frankenthaler

The 1st graders created monoprints after studying Helen Frankenthaler. We used watercolor paints to make a colorful image on the table. After checking to make sure every color was good and wet, we took a piece of watercolor paper and pushed it down on the paint. All of the paint soaked up into the paper in a very interesting way. The students really enjoyed seeing the "magic" involved in this kind of printmaking.

Kindergarten Creates a Pumpkin Patch

The last two weeks with full day kindergarten have been spent creating a giant pumpkin patch. Through the exciting medium of printmaking we've created this vegetable garden. The kindergartners first created a practice pumpkin on paper. Then they copied their own image onto a Styrofoam plate. From there they cut into the Styrofoam plate with their ballpoint pens, just barely "carving" into the plate. The next week we rolled ink onto our plates with a brayer and then printed the pumpkin on a large black piece of paper. This is always one of my favorite autumn projects. Here are some student examples!

2nd Graders Finish Klee City

After a couple weeks of oil pastel and watercolor our cities inspired by Paul Klee are done. Here are some student examples:

1st Grade Finishes Butterfly Printmaking

All 1st graders studied butterflies in their regular classroom. In art class we added on to the butterfly experience by printmaking our own butterflies. We recently finished them. Take a look at the exciting results!

Kindergartners study Piet Mondrian

All kindergartners recently looked at the artwork of Piet Mondrian. He was an artist who used very straight lines and basic colors in his geometric paintings. We looked at his artwork Broadway Boogie Woogie. The students came up with creative interpretations of his artwork. After looking at Mondrian's artwork, we made our own out of colored tape. We only used the primary colors. Here are some pictures of the kindergartners artwork!

Artists of the Month

Each month I pick out several artworks from my classes that I think really stands out. I pick two artists from each grade to showcase as "Artists of the Month." These artists get their pictures hung up on a special wall and get shown on Friday's morning announcements. It is quite an honor. Here are some photos of October's "Artists of the Month."