Monochromatic Self Portraits

6th graders are creating collage self- portraits. I took a picture of each of their faces and then went into photoshop and printed them out in black and white with a posterized filter over them. This way students could pick one color and create a value scale on their face. We learned about monochromatic color schemes. Students are focusing on using magazine clippings to block out the values on their face. I created an example of Mr. Glad for the students to get inspired by (I posted it at the bottom.) We looked at the work of Chuck Close and how he uses blocks of color to represent areas on the face. The students will choose a separate color for their background, preferably a complimentary color. So far, they are doing a very nice job. I will post again when they are all finished!

Van Gogh Landscape Collages

By far my favorite Van Gogh painting is his Wheat Field with Cypresses. I decided what better inspiration for a 5th grade project. We talked about the movements of impressionism, post-impressionism, and expressionism. We discussed how Van Gogh's work spanned these movements and became world renowned. As a class we read a little bio about Van Gogh that I found here. I also showed the students a small Prezi presentation that can be found here. We discussed textures, impasto painting, and Van Gogh's new approach to applying paint. We used chalk pastels dipped in tempera paint to create our initial painted papers. I got the inspiration for this part of the lesson from a lesson I saw on Deep Space Sparkle a while back. We learned the word impasto or texture painting, we tried to create lots of textures on our painted papers. After that we created layers of paper to make a landscape collage. We finished them off by adding details with oil pastels. I am so impressed with how these turned out. During this project my husband and I had the opportunity to go to NY for a long weekend and see the actual painting by Van Gogh. I showed it all to the kids and zoomed in on the details.They were so fascinated by the real textures. For the full lesson plan Click Here

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.