Glue Line Watercolor Pumpkins

This is another lesson I have seen floating around on some other blogs. It is a pretty basic contour line drawing of a pumpkin. I had pumpkins on the middle of each table for students to observe. Buying eight pumpkins and getting them into school wasn't an easy feet for little me, and I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to do with them when I was done. Nonetheless we used them to discuss what an observation drawing is. After adding our glue we used watercolor with a wet on wet technique. I had students add lots of water to the paper first so that their colors would run and bleed together. At the very end we went around all our glue lines with a fine point sharpie marker to make them pop! My full lesson can be found here. I ended up taking all the pumpkins I bought to a pumpkin carving party!

Fauvist Inspried Still Life

This project was inspired by Henri Matisse and his fauvist style of painting. We discussed using expressive brushstrokes and colors to create a truly unique piece of artwork. We talked about perspective to create the look of a table moving back in space. We also discussed what a collage is and how Matisse was not only known for paintings, but also a world famous collage artist. I had students collect fruit stickers to add an element of realism to their bowl of fruit. We finished them off by using gold wrapping paper and black sharpie to create a fancy frame. For the full lesson click here.

Thanksgiving Quilt Project

A handful of 5th grade students see me for an extra art class
every week. If a student is not enrolled in band or choir then they will have a specials class during that time. I consider these my students that I can really polish and make shine! A lot of them may be in my class because they lack the motivation to be in band or choir, which means I have to work extra hard to find things that motivate and interest them. This project was one that really got them excited! We created a thanksgiving quilt out of watercolor paintings, construction paper, and oil pastels. I started this assignment by doing a small presentation on what a symbol is. We discussed universal symbols for certain holidays. We went around the room naming some symbols that might represent Thanksgiving. We talked about the significance of a symbol withstanding hundreds of Thanksgivings and making it to present day. I brought in several things I thought might represent Thanksgiving, such as, pumpkins, gourds, indian corn, leaves, etc. We then did contour line drawings of our symbols on 8x8 inch paper. Some students drew from the objects I brought in, others had me search images of pies and turkeys and I had them on the Smart Board as references.
The next class we added oil pastels overtop of our pencil drawings and then did a watercolor resist. When our paintings were dry we glued them to a 12 by 12 sheet of construction paper. I had about 4 colors for the kids to choose from. They hole punched around the edges and then did either a straight stitch or a whip stitch to finish the edges. The very last step was to take a gold metallic marker (I used Prang Metallics) and write what you were thankful for around the construction paper border. I created a large quilt square for the center and used scrap booking paper to create smaller patchworking squares around it. This took about four 35 minute classes to complete.