Optical Design (5th & 6th)

5th and 6th grade are learning all about Op Art! As part of this unit, they must complete an optical illusion of their own and add color to make it look 3D. These are just rough draft pieces, but they show how students have already progressed in their use of line, color, and value.

2017 PGCPS Art Exhibition

Despite my recent absence I was able to collect about nine pieces for the PG Mall art show this year! Here are the finished panels:

4th Grade Pumpkin Paintings

Watercolor pumpkins with fourth grade back from October/November! We talked about pattern and learned how to draw pumpkins as a class. Then we used warm colors to paint them.

6th Grade Gesture Drawings

6th grade learned about gesture drawing by watching a brief PowerPoint and then drawing from observation! Small groups of students drew the poses of their classmates within 1min. intervals. This allowed many different students to draw vs. pose. In this exercise, students were encouraged to draw the pose only using a joined stick figure.  Many students also experimented with overlapping poses, using different colors for different poses, varying the size of their drawing, etc.

Gesture drawing is the first step to learning the art of figure drawing, which 6th graders will have the chance to explore later this year

1st Grade Snowflake Watercolors

Students used the wax resist technique to create these stunning snowflake paintings using only cool colors. First grade absolutely loved creating their own snowflakes inspired by a teacher demonstration that focused on using shapes, lines, and dots to create unique snowflakes. 

3rd Grade Secret Messages

This is a fun activity suitable for almost any age group in which we discuss the painting technique of Wax Resist. Students view a demonstration of the "magic trick" and then are encouraged to create their own secret messages! All students are given a white crayon and a tray of watercolor paint. After drawing or writing something in white crayon on their white paper, they can use any color watercolor to make those messages or images appear! Students absolutely love this assignment, which I often teach before completing a final wax resist project. 

Wax Resist - Wax from crayon or oil pastel will "resist" water-based paints, meaning the paint will not stick to the drawing material. 

5th Grade Block Still Life

For this project, students worked at their tables to construct a tower or towers out of geometric shapes. Once their buildings were constructed they were shown a demonstration of how to complete and observational drawing of their buildings. The buildings were described as a still life.

The results were fantastic, despite a few of the towers being accidentally knocked down during the drawing process! Some groups made many small towers and were able to draw more than one during the class period.

Students used only crayons and pencils to create their final pieces, and were encouraged to try and match the colors as closely as possible. There was a lot of excellent sharing during this activity.

Geometric Shapes - Shapes made with points and lines. "Shapes with a name" such as squares, triangles, rectangles, diamonds, etc.
Observational Drawing - Looking at the subject and drawing what is presented to the eye.
Still Life - A painting or drawing of an arrangement of objects. In this case the objects are colorful geometric shape blocks.

1st Grade & Kindergarten Valentines

Happy Valentine's Day from the GNS Art room!

In honor of Valentine's Day, the 1st graders and Kindergarteners at GNS made Valentines for someone or something special in their lives! The results were adorable, and made everyone smile.

They got large pink, purple, or red hearts and then used markers, crayons, and their imaginations to create cards, characters, or drawings. Many students requested a second heart and some cut out additional hearts or shapes or mounted their hearts on white or colored backgrounds. 

It was a very simple assignment, but we took the opportunity to review symmetry, as all of the heart shapes were perfectly symmetrical. Studnets also learned how to cut a heart of their own by tracing a teardrop shape with the fold at the center to create a heart when it was unfolded. Symmetry appears in all geometric and some organic shapes and we discussed this before students were able to decorate their hearts.

Symmetry - The quality of being made up of exactly similar parts facing each other or around an axis. Or "it's the same on both sides, like a mirror!".