Kindergarten - Learning shapes, colors, and listening skills

In order to help kindergarten age students become better artists,
they need to understand that art is a process,
and that there are all types of art.
This lesson incorporated mixed media such as cutting construction paper,
crayons, watercolor paint and markers.

Students worked independently at their seats, but followed along to a
list of step by step instructions administered by the art teacher.
Each child was required to quietly listen for the instruction,
than react to it with specific media.

One instruction may say, " pick a crayon, and draw your favorite shape",
than the next instruction would be, " cut out a different shape, and glue it inside
your crayon drawing from the last step".

As the lesson continues, shapes and colors start to cross and mix with each other.

Drawings from various classes of Third graders

When learning to draw, it helps to do various styles
of drawings rather than just sketching or drawing realistically.
Students did portrait drawings, and hand drawings using a continuous line technique.
The only rule to these drawings was that you
could not lift your pencil or writing tool up from the surface you are drawing on.

Students were forced to connect aspects of the face with pencil lines,
rather than pick up the pencil and draw the face exactly as they saw it.

Kindergarten - Bird paintings - Learning various painting techniques

Kindergarten students learned three different painting techniques in this specific lesson:
the tap and turn, smooth, and scraping technique.
Each technique builds on, and sharpens the painting and creativity skills.
This lesson shows the young artists that a brush can do more than just paint in one style.

Students traced bird stencils, then painted smoothly with tempera paint.
All classes learn how to utilize a paint palette and a water cup
like any professional painter would.
I encourage the students to "take the paint form the edges", so as to not
mess up your colors.
The results are noticeable in the use of various colors on all aspects of the paintings.
Students begin to challenge themselves to make all variations of colors,
not just mush the colors all together.

While the paint is wet, turn the paintbrush over to the other side,
and scrape the thick paint away.

Using a tap and turn technique, students load their brush with more than one color,
then tap and turn the brush on their paper.
Each time the brush taps the paper, colors mix, and give the feeling of texture.
We painted a sky, and some flowers the birds were flying over.

Thank you to the classroom teachers who did a great job
mounting the birds on bright colored paper.

Illustration paintings from Second, Third and Fourth Grade - Part One

Students looked through donated Nat'l Geographic magazines to
find the perfect image.
They then sketched and painted the image using
pencil, acrylic and tempera paint.
We studied how painters paint the background, then middle ground, foreground,
then add the subject of the painting with details.

Some students chose to split their image in half.
The result was an image with one half painted, the other half is the original image.

Students keep their sketches along with their painting for later review.

Morris Louis style paintings with pencil hand drawings

Morris Louis was a New York based artist who was a part of the color field painter's movement of the 1940's and 50's.
Louis' work was minimal and focused on how color
is represented as positive and negative space.

Morris Louis,
Gamma tau, 1960

Claustral, 1961

Here is an example of the outcome of the project I did, that the students first observed and discussed.

In order to mimic the style of painting Mr. Louis practiced,
I watered down various colors of tempera paint, to give the paint
the ability to run all over the paper.

After pouring the paint on our paper, we used our arms and hands to
move and manipulate the painting.

Stay tuned for the final outcomes, when we add our realistic pencil hand drawings
to our projects.