We have some wirey students!

This week the first graders and kindergartners are learning about the artist Alexander Calder and his wire sculptures. Calder loved bending wire into different things. Some of his favorite things were animals and the circus. After looking at Mr. Calder's work, we started our own wire sculptures. The students could chose any subject matter they wanted. There was a wide range of sculptures. Shown below are sculptures of a penguin, glasses, a basketball hoop, necklace, handcuffs, a zebra that stands on its own, hula hoop, and a bug antenna to an imaginary bug named "Hawk Screecher!"

Kindergartners Go Wild

We read Where the Wild Things Are in all full day kindergarten classes. After reading the book, we talked about the different body parts the wild things had i.e. claws, horns, tails, etc. We then drew our own wild thing. The students were very creative. We then used crayons and texture plates to color our wild things. Here are a couple examples:

New Contest: Kiwanis Christmas Contest!!!

The local Danville Christmas/Holiday Contest has begun. This is a cool opportunity for all Danville North Elementary students to create artwork. While this will not be a project we do in class, I do encourage any student who would like to participate to ask me about the contest! A couple things to know about the contest: Any student who enters must get papers signed by a guardian, there are prizes if you win, winners get their artwork displayed in the downtown Art Gallery on the Square. For more rules and information I am putting up pictures of the entry form. If you have trouble printing these forms, please email me at mailto:msmith@danville.k12.in.us.

I can email forms or your child can pick them up in my room.

All entries are due no later than November 25th.

GOOD LUCK!!!

Where the Wild Things Are

In second grade we read the book Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. After looking at Mr. Sendak's illustrations we created our own wild things. We also looked at different textures and started applying texture to our wild thing! Here are a couple examples!

We had a blue day :)

The first graders started painting their self-portraits blue. We looked at Pablo Picasso's self-portrait from his blue period. We learned that when you paint in one color it's called monochromatic. We also learned that the light blue is a tint and the dark blue is a shade. Here are a couple examples!

November Artists of Month

Each month I pick six artists out of the three grades as Artists of the Month. These students created some awesome artworks! Congratulations!!!

2nd Graders meet Mondrian

In 2nd grade we are making a quick one-day project based on the work of Piet Mondrian. Mondrian was one of the most famous abstract artists. He created artworks using lines and basic shapes and colors. He mostly used primary colors like in his painting Broadway Boogie Woogie. Here are several students' artworks!

Pablo Picasso Gets Blue

All first graders have been studying the artwork of Pablo Picasso. The last couple of weeks we looked at his painting called Weeping Woman. This is a very colorful and kind of crazy artwork. Now we are studying Picasso's Blue Period. Pablo Picasso has a time in his life that was very sad and he painted blue pictures because of it. One of his paintings was a self-portrait which is a picture that you make of yourself. We are making self-portraits and we will be coloring them blue. We also learned that when you color something just one color it is called monochromatic! Here are some of the first drawings as examples: