Still Life

Done by one of my more advanced students- my challenge was the bowl of shells.

Drawing by the same student for comparison.

Ahh, the dreaded still life. It's not that I don't see the value, but it is hard to jazz it up for the elementary crowd.  We started with just a basic drawing.  The 2nd graders just blew through it, without much concern for my oh so careful directions/instruction on scale/proportion and size.  So, I considered that a warm up, and we did the same still life again, only using a very simple view finder.  I introduced it as a tool, and asked that the students try it- even if they never used one again, just to have the experience.  Since the drawings were much bigger, and much clearer the 2nd time around, I broke out the tempera cakes, and let the students paint.  We then compared/contrasted our two finished works with a simple questionnaire, where I asked questions like which was easier, which was more challenging, which was more fun, etc.  I think they got the idea of a still life, and we are all ready to move on to the next thing.  On a side note, I have been working on challenging the more advanced students, so when I set my still life up, I included some harder items, which were strategically in the view of the students in need of a challenge.  I also know that I need to put things in place for the ones that struggle.  An example of this was that I put blue tinted water in the bottles, to make them easier to define.

Still Life

As we are learning about Still Life, we looked at the work of Carrie Waller.   She made an awesome video response on her blog to our questions, and we discussed how objects can be interesting or important to people.  Here are our still life drawings in progress.  I love to see how the kids' eyes are developing, and how some develop a great ability with scale and proportion, and others for color.

An Artsy Start to the School Year Continued

For the 4th graders, we are doing some color theory. Students love their name- and they are learning cursive writing. So, we did a repeated line design, which abstracted their name. Then, they chose a color family to use as their color scheme. Some were more successful than others- I thought this one worked well.
I loved the personality that came through in these simple drawings.

An Artsy Start to the School Year

3rd Grade-Still Life with Black Glue Line

3rd Grade- Self Portrait using Guidelines

3rd Grade- Self Portrait Using Guidelines

2nd Grade- Me and My Family

2nd Grade- Me and My Family

I've now had all the kiddos in the art room for a few sessions. We're moving past the "warm ups" into the meat of the standards for each grade level. I'm really trying to work on drawing skills and craftsmanship this year. I'm trying to plan some lessons that will lead us into the fun of the Chihuly art projects, along with producing artwork that will work for our Original Works Yours fundraiser.