Blind Drawing

One of the other projects we have done is a blind drawing. This can be used with almost any grade.  We were required to draw three flowers on a piece of drawing paper without looking, using a white crayon. We used warm and cool water colors to paint over the white crayon.  When we did this, the flowers appeared very clearly! 

An extension activity would be studying flowers and where different flowers grow and why.

Bunny Art

One of our recent projects in class was a project dealing with complimentary colors. It was on a first grade level.  My group was assigned blue and orange. We took a piece of white drawing paper and drew thick and thin horizontal lines using blue and then drew vertical lines using orange.  After the paper dried, we traced out pre-cut patterns onto our plaid paper. We then glued it all together to form a bunny. 

An extension activity would be to have the students make a picture of plaid. I would give them magazines to look through and find plaid in them. Then they could either make a collage or a scene made of plaid. 

Going on a Safari!

This project is used to introduce students to warm and cool colors. This project is called a hidden drawing. The picture is hidden, and you need special glasses to see the picture. We made our own glasses from red film and construction paper so we could see the animals. The project is done by drawing a picture in a light cool color, we used the color sky blue. Our theme was a hidden safari, so we all drew pictures of safari animals. We drew over the picture in shapes in a pattern form to hide the drawing with warm colors such as reds, oranges, and yellows. We also wrote three clues to be displayed with our animals for people to guess. 

An extension activity for this class could still be related to the safari theme but have them talk about what they did over the weekend or draw their favorite place and hide it behind the shapes. This way they can talk about what they drew and what is meaningful to them.

Story Collage

This week in class we talked about Eric Carle and how he created his books. We did the projected and mimicked his work. First, we took blank sheets of paper and painted them many different ways to get a swirled look. Next, we sketched out a part of a story that we wanted to create. After that we took our painted sheets and cut out the parts we wanted and made our storybook page. My story collage was inspired by the book "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom". It was and still is my favorite story book so I took a page out of that and recreated it with Eric Carle's style.

An extension activity off of this would be to recreate a scene from another book that they are reading at the time whether it has pictures or not. They can use their imagination this way and use their senses to be a part of the story.

Van Gogh Inspired

This picture is inspired from Van Gogh's "Starry Night" painting. It is a city scape using tissue paper and focusing on background, middle ground, and foreground. We used tissue paper and sharpie markers or oil pastels. We were also focusing on movement in the background.

An extension activity off of this could be using a different medium to reenact the Starry Night. You could let the children choose or you could have the materials already set out.

Van Gogh Inspired

This is a finger painted picture inspired by Van Gogh's "A Starry Night". We did our own variation of it and used our imagination. It would be for the kindergarten level. We were focusing on the background, foreground, and middle ground to create movement like Van Gogh used in his paintings. Then I Framed it by putting construction paper behind it.

For this activity you could mix it up by having them either do their own type of starry night or have them try and paint the Starry Night again. 

Elements and Principles of Art

Below are 5 pictures of Elements and Principles of art. In order they are: emphasis, contrast, geometric shapes, texture, and organic shapes.