One-Point Perspective Orchard

For the element of Space we went pretty basic to emphasize how space affects size, color, and composition. After learning how to line objects up to a vanishing point, our students chose a specific tree, and their favorite season to draw it in. 

The medium of choice for this project was oil pastels! These are so fun to work with because of the various ways to blend, the strong and bright color, and the control you can have with them because they are in a solid stick form. Overall, I think everyone had fun experimenting with them!

We had a huge variety of trees, colors, and seasons which makes these SO fun to look at!

Everyone was so impressed with Daniel's bold sunrise orchard.

And there is a beautiful split-complimentary color scheme here done by Vincent!

Overall, this has proven to be one of my favorite projects, and hopefully one of the student's favorites as well!

Space-Part 2

The second approach we took with the element Space was to learn how to manipulate distance, or rather the space between subjects and each other, and the subjects and the viewer. Using the visual below, we identified how items far away are higher on the page, smaller, and duller in color. Items close up are larger, lower on the page, and brighter. 

K-1 worked with watercolor to create some European tulip field inspired paintings. 

At their wee age, they conneted points on the bottom of their paper to a vanishing point to make the feild appear to disappear into the distance. 

They learned that if you dab your wet paper with a tissue, a cloud effect is created. They also saw that if you sprinkle salt on watercolors the colors are absorbed creating a cool "flower" texture. This also creates a "snowflake" texture for our 4/5 classes further below...

The 2nd and 3rd grade classes learned about foreground, middle ground, and background with the help of some pop-up cards. In order to make this project completable in 35 minutes, most peices were pre-cut. They did have to cut many parts in half, design their own clouds, and assemble their scene. They did a great job of following multiple directions. 

The concentration was so thick you could cut it with a knife. 

Great Job Hyrum! Corinne and Janeya showed their mastery of space by placing the smaller items farther back into the distance, and the larger ones close up. 

When painting our "winter birch trees" the 4th and 5th graders focused on identifying the light source in order to choose the direction of their shadows, and where to place the trees along with what size the trees should be in order to create a realistic scenery. This combined with that new watercolor techniques involving salt made for a beautiful project.

Trinity is excited about how her scene looks when she removes the tape while Sam continues doing the same. 

Waylon and Daniel add their birch tree details with India ink.

Abigail and Nikolay focus intently.

What an incredible, violet sky Abigail made.

Samuel's is very soothing to look at.

Artwork like this almost makes me sad that winter is coming to a close.

.....Almost ;)

Space-Part 1

The Element of Art, space, is in my opinion the most complex element because there are many different ways to manipulate it. As the elementary classes began learning about space, we approached two types of space: Space in terms of distance and depth, and space in terms of positive and negative. If you are not super familiar with these types, you are not alone.

during week one, our younger grades of art learned about positive and negative space. Positive space in a piece of artwork is basically the focus or subject of the art. The negative space is all of the background space around the subject. To help understand this better, our students viewed the video below:

To reinforce the element we just finished, the K-1 class created "tye-dye lines". They colored a tye dye design and then drew and cut different types of lines. By separating them and gluing them to black paper, the lines created positive space while the tye dye became the background negative space.

Cutting and gluing these "puzzle pieces" neatly really pushed the K-1 classes abilities; it's harder than it looks!

I was so impressed by Riah's gluing abilities! And though a tinge off-kilter, Kassie's spacing is awesome! 

The 2nd and 3rd graders created a snowflake that emphasized positive and negative space. I tried to trick the students when having them identify the positive and negative space, thinking that the black and white would throw them off, but they knew with certainty that no matter what it's color, the snowflake was the positive space. Here we really worked our fine motor skills when cutting the delicate snowflakes and lining up our paper to glue.
Aren't these dynamic looking?!

Our 4th and 5th graders created positive space with sea creature silhouettes. The farther away our creatures swam, the smaller they became.

If you look really closely, you may be able to find Mayra's mermaid. The movement of the delicate fish bodies in Samuel's underwater scene is spot-on!

Woah! I think Abigail's sea turtle is about to land overhead!

Who's ready to see how the other Space projects turn out?! If their other art turns out anything like this, I look forward to it!