John Nieto Wolves

Just started a lesson with my third graders for their "Nature and Animals" unit. We are drawing John Nieto wolves, here is a link to some of his work http://nietofineart.com/ He is the artist that designed the poster for the 2002 winter Olympics.

We started by doing observational drawings (from various wolf photographs) and then we outlined them with Sharpie. Students then added some colorful highlights with watercolor marker.

Next week we will paint the wolves with various watercolor techniques such as wash, blot, drip, salt, wax resist, wet-into-wet. Then we will add some fur texture with oil pastels.

Cute shirt!

Karla Gerard Houses

As part of the second grader's "Community Art" unit we were making murals of rural, urban, and suburban houses. We looked at the fantastic contemporary folk artist Karla Gerard. Here is her website http://stores.ebay.com/art-by-karla-g Students created their houses using a collage with construction paper. To create the white borders the students mounted the pieces of the house on white paper and then cut them out leaving a 1/4 inch border. Then they decorated the colored pieces with various patterns and designs.

They also made really cool trees that I will need to remember to take pictures of!

Michel Keck Pop Art Dogs

This is one of my favorite projects I have done...5th graders made these Pop Art Michel Keck dogs as part of their "Transformation" curriculum theme. Michel Keck is a fantastic contemporary artist. Here is her website http://www.michelkeck.com/ she has a really cool series of dog portrait collages made of brightly colored patterns and product labels.

I printed 8 different types of dogs...and I traced them to create just the outlines of the dog faces with a Sharpie marker. If I get the chance I will post the face templates I made. I photocopied them and then let the students choose whatever kind of dog I liked (I printed a few cats for the non-dog people).

Then we did a pencil transfer of the image onto drawing paper. See the "cool techniques" section on my website for a how to pencil transfer.

Then students got a check list of several things (texture, black and white, shape, line, text, visual culture and a few others) Students then began filling in areas of the dog face with  brightly colored patterns drawn with marker and colored pencil. They had a bunch of product labels to look at for their visual culture part and texture plates for the texture part.

Then we tore or cut out our dog faces, tore lined or graph paper and collaged them on top of a piece of construction paper.

Milton Glaser Portraits

Sixth graders created these Milton Glaser Silhouette Self-Portraits with Tempera and Sharpie. 

Milton Glaser is a graphic design artist famous for his iconic design:

He also did a series of celebrity portraits featuring people like Bob Dylan, Flight of the Concords and Barbie.

Student Examples:

Student Examples

Jane Perkins

Another assemblage artist you all might like is Jane Perkins! Here is an article about her. She uses recycled and found objects to create very lifelike portraits. As part of my first graders "Recycled Art" curriculum theme I thought a little group assemblage would be nice. Our school mascot is the warrior so I thought it would be a good image because it is recognizable and simple enough with limited colors. I did the under painting so they would know what colors go where and sorted a bunch of recycled and found objects into color groups. Then the students took turns one table at a time to come and add their objects to the assemblage.

Jillian Kogan Assemblage

I found this great flag assemblage artist Jillian Kogan. Here is her website http://www.jilliankogan.com She is a California artist that uses found objects to recreate the California flag. Our second graders are learning about "Community" as their curriculum theme so I decided that we should do a collaborative Pennsylvania assemblage with found objects that relate to our state. (The PA flag is a little complicated so we decided to do a white tailed deer instead, because it is the state mammal) If you look closely you can see some Penn State, Hershey's, Heinz, Rutter's objects for example.  The students all got a scavenger hunt paper with different PA objects and the person who brought in the most objects from home won a prize. We got some great stuff and the kids and parents were very creative. We even got some real deer antlers!

This Week's Lesson

K- George Rodrigue Blue Dogs
1- Textured Pinch Pots and Melted Crayon Resists
2- Knuffle Bunny Cartoons
3- Lascaux Cave Paintings
4- Edvard Munch Expressionism Screams and Warhol Pop Art Celebrity Monoprints
5- Shepard Fairey Teacher Grid Enlargements
6- Artist Trading Cards and Ceramic Plates