Elementary Art with Miriam Cutelis: 09/20

9/26/09

A VISUAL LIST OF Recycled Items Needed for Art-Week of Sep 28th, 2009

In case you have these items ready to throw out......donate them to the art room instead!! Thanks in advance for all your support families!!

* Old bed-sheets pillow cases

* Pillow inserts

* Sewing needles

* Thimbles

* Wooden blocks, wooden pieces

* 11x14 frames

* Meat trays (any size)

* flat cardboard 8x11 or bigger

* wooden boards

* 8x11 frames that can be hung on a wall

* Metallic paint of any kind

* old pillows (need the insides of them only)

* thread spools (empty)

* interesting paper of any kind

* old posters that contain any type of lettering/font-(kids in 5th will be designing fonts for their posters).

* yogurt cups

Sketching out Realistic Drawings of Butterflies-2nd Grade

To be able to later paint the best butterfly possible, we needed to have an idea of what real butterflies look like. We all have the "recipe" in our heads of what a real butterfly looks like, yet I knew their images would be much richer if we drew a more informed image. I therefore printed out some butterfly images from google from home and the kids rotated these images as they practiced drawing them in their sketchbooks.

As you can see from below, the drawings they produced are just stunning and full of detail. I had to struggle here and there with a few kids needing to add a happy face on their butterfly or some wanted to add hearts to the wings. I emphasized that we were drawing a realistic drawing of a butterfly and not one from out imaginations; therefore we only drew what we saw.

Having a sketchbook for art is very essential. It keeps all these drawings and ideas in one place. If your child has not yet brought one in please send in at least a composition book. At the end of the year, you will have a book full of past learning and be able to see real growth in your child. It also serves as a great starting point when talking about your child's day.....We all know how much they love to talk about what they did in school (not!)

You too can do this at home. If your child likes cars, or dinosaurs or trains for example, go to google images and search for images that fit your child's latest obsession and let them practice doing some realistic drawings. Begin with pointing out some basic shapes in the image and explain that they will only draw what they see. Have a blast!!! Would love to see what you come up with.

Just look at those details!

Here are some fun videos you could watch with your child!!! Enjoy!!

2nd Grade Paint Background for Their Butterfly Paintings

As a final piece for our painting unit, children will combine all they learned about painting into a final piece about butterflies. To begin each child is painting a background that include close up of plant life and the use of various shades and tints of green.

Each child used a book that had images of plant life as a reference to sketch several up-close plant life in their sketchbooks

9/25/09

Pre-K Add Details to their Sculptures

The Pre-k classes this week are adding details to their sculptures created from larger shapes last week. Children are adding buttons, beads, dominoes, and other small pieces; all donated by the amazing Murch parents. Next week we will be painting these sculptures in acrylic silver to make them look like metallic sculptures.

What would we do without the amazing donations from Murch parents? Every decorative item here has been donated and it's what makes and will continue to make the art program so rich and dynamic.

We used glue and glue brushes to glue on our pieces.

Portraits Almost Done- 4th Grade

In the last phase of their drawing unit, each child got to make a light drawing of themselves using their own black and white picture as a visual reference. Remember from our prior posts, each portrait will be created with one adjective in mind; one aspect of themselves they would like others to recognize immediately as they view their work. In their final drawings they are expected to include all they have been learning about facial proportion, contrast shading, and specific techniques in drawing each facial feature. Next week, children will add dark and medium tones to some areas using a pencil and this should make their drawings come to life.

Printmaking in Kindergarten

Kids used geometric shaped blocks donated by Ms. Bogan and corks donated by Murch parents to make these amazingly beautiful shape prints on paper that was donated by another Murch parent. each child got to make 3 pages and they had a great time. I explained the difference between printing with their blocks versus painting with them. When printing the block only travels up and down, when painting, the block slides across the page.

Gesture Drawings with the 5th Graders

For our design unit the kids will be designing a poster that encourages movement and healthy exercise to be hung around the school. We first looked at various advertisements and listed key parts we discovered in each ad. These key parts were:

1. logo

2. picture

3. description in small print

4. Headline sentence- Large print

Since our ads will be about moving and exercise we had to practice drawing the body in movement. Each child used their sketchbooks to draw 3-minute quickgesture sketches of their classmates in motion.

Here is a model posing for 3 minutes

Sewing our DC Landmark Pillows Next Week

Here are the DC Landmark pillows drying on the rug in the art room. Next week we will sew them into pillows. I must thank parents for all the cloth and bed-sheet donations which made this project possible.

We used images of DC Landmarks as resource.

9/22/09

Looking at portraits with 4th Graders

In class we have been looking at many many famous portraits and trying to deduce what the artist might have wanted to tell us about the character they painted/drew. The kids loved doing this and I think they could have kept going for the whole class. Their insights were very interesting and creative.

We came to the conclusion that artists use any or all of the items listed below to give the viewer clues about the person being portrayed. These clues come in many forms.

(1) posture,

(2) facial expression,

(3) background,

(4) props and

(5) clothing.

Each child went through a list of adjectives and chose one MASTER adjective they'd like to focus in for their final portrait. The goal of their portrait would then be to make all items listed above congruent with this adjective so that any viewer would immediately see a strong character shine through in their final portraits.

As homework each child is supposed to list 3 things:

ART HOMEWORK for ALL 4th Graders.

1. What could be in the background that would support the adjective you chose for yourself? (example: if you chose "athletic" as your adjective your background could be a playing field.)

2. What could you be wearing that would best support the adjective you chose? (Example: If your adjective is "creative" you might be wearing a smock with paint on it in your portrait.)

3. What "prop" could you include in your final piece that would support the adjective you chose. (Example: If the adjective you chose was "sassy", you might be holding a mirror in your portrait).

HOME EXTENSION AND MORE IDEAS

A great home extension might be visiting the National Portrait Gallery. I will e-mail the museum right now and see if they could set us up for a trip too. But in the meantime. If your child is catching on this topic, feel free to take them on a personal tour.

Here's a fun lesson.....you can try this at home.......this guy is great at giving you great drawing advice.....

This one has shading...which we will be also doing next week.

9/21/09

Ms. Fitzpatrick's Collage Gallery

All kindergartners will begin their collage unit after painting. This exercise was mostly for me to see where they are in their scissor skills. Some of the ideas such as begin with large shapes and then add smaller shapes have carried through from their painting lessons when they painted animals.

Paty's collage

If you would like to do collage at home all you need are (1) varied types of paper, a (2) pair of scissors, (3) a stick of glue. You might want to guide your child into making something simple like a plant, flowers, or a person. Some kids get very frustrated if they do not cut a perfect circle. Just encourage experimentation and emphasize that all circles do not need to be perfect.