Warm & Cool Leaves

These are always a fun and easy fall project. 

Kindergarten and 1st grade students use oil pastels and tempera cakes to create textured paper using warm and cool colors. After the paint dried, we learned how to cut leaf shapes from the warm paper and collaged them onto the cool backgrounds. The final step was to use neutral colors to add details like veins on the leaves and motion marks in the background. Always love seeing these! 

 

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

 I recently shared a video I made for my online classes on how to create a “Very Hungry Caterpillar” collage using painted paper or construction paper. Check it out, share with your students, or make one yourself! :)

Surprised! Tigers in the Jungle

5th grade viewed the works of Henri Rousseau, especially Surprised! 

We used a wet-on-wet watercolor technique to create a stormy sky. I love the lightning effect these got where the watercolors ran on the page!

After our papers dried, we followed a video from Art for Kids Hub to draw our tiger. Then we cut and collaged with scraps of green papers to create the jungle. 

The Very Busy Spider

Because you HAVE to wear a spider dress with this lesson. ^_^

This lesson is a new addition to the kindergarten curriculum this year as a study of secondary colors. I adapted this lesson after seeing it on Artolazzi's blog. We started by mixing secondary colors from primary colors and used texture combs to make the papers more interesting. I cut their papers into different shapes before we painted so that they could be used for the spider's body, head, and legs. 

The following week, we worked together to cut the oval body, circle head, and stick legs for our spider. We used horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines to create a spider web drawing for our spider's home. Adorable, will definitely do again! 

Marbled Paper Starry Night

Shaving cream marbling is always so fun and creates amazing results! 2nd grade used this technique to emulate the movement we see in Van Gogh's Starry Night. 

After the paper dried, we used black paper and yellow & white oil pastels to add scenery to our artworks. 

Warhol Flowers

Just realized I never posted these fantastic Warhol-inspired flowers that 1st grade made! We started with squares of colored paper. Then we used paint scrapers to add scratchy black paint. Once those were dry, we drew and cut simple flowers to add. Easy process and a knockout at the art show!

Lizards in the Jungle

These paper sculpture lizards were a favorite for 3rd grade. I feel like 3rd grade is getting all of the awesome projects this year? Good for them. ^_^

We looked at many of Henri Rousseau's jungle artworks and discussed what kind of animals live in the jungle. Then we viewed many images of different lizards. I created an outline for them printed on green construction paper to get them started. This saved us some time on drawing so that we could focus on the paper sculpture part of the project. If you want them to draw the lizards themselves, Art for Kids Hub has a fantastic lizard drawing video they could follow here. 

After we cut them out, we folded them down the center to make them pop up. We created a paper leaf, added some oil pastel details, and attached the lizard. 

Some kids asked if we were going to put googly eyes on them, so I made sure we had plenty to add. :D

Faith Ringgold Mural

1st grade viewed the quilt artworks of Faith Ringgold. We reviewed symmetry and introduced radial symmetry. Then we worked together to create radial designs that would become quilt squares. 

I used their squares as the edge of a giant quilt mural, basically a giant version of 2nd grade's Ringgold cityscape collages. 

The quote is the last line of Ringgold's stroy, "Tar Beach". This mural took me the longest to make so far this year, but definitely worth it! ^_^

Tar Beach Collage

2nd grade viewed Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold. We drew and painted a cityscape inspired by the city skylines in her work. Then we attached the painting to a larger paper. After that, we added squares of fabric and patterned papers. They are awesome!

Complementary Kusama Collages

This easy 2nd grade project was a great refresher in color theory while learning about the unique works of Yayoi Kusama. We started by drawing a pumpkin on a colored piece of paper. Then we added dots to match Kusama's style.

Next we cut out the pumpkin and glued it to a complementary paper. We finished them off with geometric designs in the background. Easy, fun and cute!

Andy Warhol Prints

This was my first time use Gelli Printing plates in the classroom, and they are awesome! We used regular liquid tempera paints instead of printing ink. After viewing the works of Andy Warhol, focusing on his flower artworks and discussing the printing process, we used fake flowers and Gelli plates to create these gorgeous collages!

Students printed as much as they could in one class period. During the next class time, they cut up their "best" ones and made collages. Love these and I will definitely be using Gelli plates again! 

Textured Hearts

One of my favorite new lessons this year comes from kindergarten! As we explore the elements & principles of art, we created textured hearts on textured paper. I don't have many in-progress pictures of this; kindergarten moves faster than my camera.

We started by using oil pastels on texture sheets to create a textured piece of paper. Then we used Crayola Model Magic to create the hearts. First we pressed them into the texture sheets, then used heart-shaped cookie cutters (yes, this is a literal "cookie cutter" lesson) to cut out the hearts. So this could be adapted to any shape, depends on what kind of cookie cutters you have. The kids were amazed and the results are gorgeous. Can't wait to do these again next year. 

And a bonus surprise: I was going to glue these to their papers when they dried, so I had the kids set their hearts on their papers to keep them together. The hearts stuck to the papers, so I didn't have to glue them! :D 

Kusama Collages

While Kusama is known for her installations, she also creates amazing paintings using organic shapes and intricate designs. 5th grade viewed many of these as the inspiration for these collages.

Original paintings by Kusama

We used this as a chance to review complementary colors. Students chose 2 papers and cut organic shapes from one to collage onto the other.

Then we used Sharpie markers to add designs like we found in Kusama's paintings. Gorgeous results!

Check out these awesome artworks!