2nd grade uses up every last minute of art class to finish these fabulous mixed-media bird collages!
I love the stories that these artworks tell! If you look closely, there is so much character in EVERY piece!
Starting with a cool technique to make texture on their tree trunk, we "tapped" cardboard squares into black tempura paint. I asked the class if trees are flat, or 3 dimensional, can we put our arms around them? I showed them how to scrape their cardboard in a "smily face" motion "around" the trunk, instead of straight across. This will help give the illusion of a 3-dimensional form. They loved this technique!
We moved onto cutting, starting with squares and rectangles. Students were provided with some pre-painted paper that I had left over. (Gotta love using up paper!) Students were able to tell me how to cut semi-circles and triangles (including isosceles triangles) out of these quadrilateral shapes. After each shape was cut, we talked about how to place it - looking at my example and images of artist Charlie Harper for inspiration. Which shapes overlap another? Which shapes should we make sure are the right proportion to the rest of the shapes? Where would we glue our head and beak shapes if we want our bird to be looking up/down, left/right?
Last step was to use Jazz Tempura and Q-Tips to dot the sky for Snow :)
