2nd grade Symmetrical Butterfly Paintings

2nd graders at Valerius, Olmsted and Jensen recently wrapped up their Symmetrical Butterflies Paintings. During the first two days of this unit, students learned about symmetry and how to draw the basic parts of a butterfly. Next, they folded a piece of drawing paper in half and drew only half of a butterfly, complete with a thorax, abdomen, head, wings and antennae. Once the body parts were completed and in proportion, 2nd graders drew creative and detailed designs in their butterfly's wings. Students then traced their drawings on the back side using natural light through a windowpane to help them see their original designs. Once they were finished, they had completely symmetrical butterflies! On days 3 - 5, we learned how to draw garden backgrounds with overlapping flowers, painted our butterflies, used crayon and watercolor on our floral backgrounds, and put it all together by cutting and gluing our butterflies to our crayon resist backgrounds.

3rd grade Mixed Media Gyotaku Collages

3rd graders recently wrapped up their Gyotaku (Japanese Fish Printing) projects. Gyotaku is a traditional Japanese art form, dating back to the mid 19th century. It is believed to have originated by fisherman wanting to record their catch at the end of the day. We, of course, do not ink real fish - although my rubber fish and sea life might have fooled some 3rd graders at first!

On the first and second day of this unit, 3rd graders created elaborate underwater backgrounds with permanent marker, crayons and watercolors; on the third day, the students selected two Gyotaku rubber stamps and with my help, printed them on printing paper. Lastly, students colored the negative spaces or white areas of their fish prints with colored pencils, cut them out, and glued them to their underwater backgrounds.

4th grade Wayne Thiebaud-inspired Cake Paintings

4th graders have been hard at work on their very detailed Tinted Cake Paintings, inspired by Bay Area Expressionist painter Wayne Thiebaud. Thiebaud is one of my personal favorite artists - I particularly love his landscapes and portraits. He is also particularly well known for his still life paintings of desserts. 4th graders looked at some of Thiebaud's cake paintings as a jumping off point for this project, and they have done such a phenomenal job infusing their own cakes with creative details and embellishments.

We learned how to draw realistic, 3-dimensional cakes step-by-step, starting with the cake tops, then the sides, bases and platters. Then, as an additional challenge, we learned how to draw layered cakes and sliced cakes. The drawing alone took about 2 and half or 3 one-hour art classes - I think all the hard work definitely shows! Next, we learned about tints. A tint is a color created by mixing one, two or more colors with white. For this project, students were not allowed to use traditional colors or black - they had to mix tints for every part of the painting. Aren't the cakes just delectable? :)

5th grade 3-D Value Drawings

I have been so impressed with my 5th graders' work on this project! 5th graders learned about perspective and value (degrees of light and dark) in order to create these wonderful abstract drawings. Students had to "color with the curve" (shade in the direction of a contour), blend values together, and create a range of 4-5 values from the lightest light to the darkest dark in order to achieve the illusion of 3-dimensionality. The degree of success on this project was so high - I really believe the final results resemble the work of middle or even high school students! See for yourself!