Second Graders … or Interior Designers?

After studying Henri Matisse, second grade students tried out interior design as a viable career option. Well, not really. But, they did design their own interior spaces using printmaking and collage. Following a presentation closely looking at Matisse’s interiors, students began tackling this project in many stages. From the wallpaper to the window treatments, every element in the interior space was created with originality and skill. One of my favorite parts of this project is that each room ends up taking on the personality of individual students. Take a tour of each room below. Be sure to take a close look at the windows, specifically the views outdoors.

Henri Matisse!

In second grade, students have been working on a multiple step project inspired by Matisse. While students are not finished yet - I found a really neat interactive learning experience through the Baltimore Museum of Art's website. Check it out:

http://www.artbma.org/flash/F_conekids.swf 

Louise Nevelson Assemblages

For the next second grade project, students looked at Louise Nevelson, a Jewish American artist, for inspiration. She creates beautifully complex sculptures that she calls “assemblages.” Nevelson found most of her materials in alleys and dumpsters. She gave new purpose to what others deemed trash by turning them into works of art. Nevelson carefully arranged the pieces in her assemblages, and coated them with one color of paint to create a unified look. In second grade, students hunted through the “classroom dumpster (boxes of random craft wooden pieces)” to find their own materials. Then, they unified their assemblage by painting it in one color. In class, we talked about how her abstract sculptures can resemble different things to all of us. What do some of the sculptures below look like to you?

Sunny Sunflowers

After learning about the tragic and intriguing life of Vincent van Gogh, students experimented with his style. In class, we improvised and students drew with oil pastels to try their hands at using thick, multicolored, and active lines like van Gogh. After feeling comfortable with his style, we switched gears, and students built upon observational skills by looking at and drawing a vase and fake sunflowers. Then, students colored each sunflower in the style of van Gogh, creating a painterly characteristic.

Hardest Working Artist of the Semester

The results are posted on artscher.weebly.com!!! In the art room, students voted for their classmates who they believe deserve the Hardest Working Artist of the Semester Award. This award recognizes students who participate above and beyond in the art room with a tremendous ability to: stay on task, keep a positive attitude, demonstrate respect to everyone and everything in the classroom, and express creativity.

To see the winners for this semester follow this link, and click on the grade that you would like to see at the top of the page: artscher.weebly.com

Pinch Pots with "Feet"

Building upon ceramic skills from first grade, second grade students made pinch pots with an attached foot in art class. Students learned how to attach two pieces of clay together to become one piece. The trick is to score, slip, and weld both pieces together. Student chose between rolling a coil, and making 3-4 separate balls for a foot. Final touches included decoration and adding consistent coats of glaze.

It’s a Paper Sculpture Jungle!

I love to teach Alexander Calder. In second grade, we looked closely into the life of Calder and his humorous personality. His stabile sculptures were a source of inspiration for this project. Prior to this project, one class period was devoted to the “Paper Construction Challenge,” in which students rotated through stations that had a variety of paper sculptures at them (cones, cylinders, spirals, rectangular prisms, etc.). Students were given about 5 minutes at each station to attempt to construct what was in front of them. This was a fun way to get gears churning, and students engaged and ready for the stabile sculptures. After going over how to construct the paper sculptures, and how to use paper tabs to hold pieces together, each student made an abstract sculpture combining constructions.

Winslow Homer Inspired Ship Paintings

The second grade has made a dramatic shift from abstraction to realism. And, who better to inspire realism? But, Winslow Homer! After learning about the American artist’s life and artwork (including his usage of foreground, middle ground, and background), students created an observational drawing of model ships in perspective. Students had the advantage of looking closely at some really cool ships in the art room, and drawing what they saw – in perspective! These drawings were then transformed into watercolor paintings by using new techniques like the watercolor wash and adding salt for a clever effect.

 

Perspective Activity

After learning about the life and artwork of American Artist Winslow Homer, students began a perspective activity. This is in preparation for a larger painting the students will create beginning at the end of the week. We studied how Homer creates an illusion of depth in many of his paintings by altering the size of objects and people in the foreground, middle ground, and background. Things in the foreground, of course, appear much larger; while, things in the background can appear teeny-tiny. We explored this as a class by splitting our paper into three sections: foreground, middle ground, and background. Then, students tried their hand at drawing simple objects varying in size, but in the appropriate section of the page. The grand finale was learning how to draw a stone or dirt path that travels through all sections of the page.

Some student examples...