California Missions - Van Gogh Style

 

4th Grade tears paper to "build" a CA Mission while recognizing geometric and organic shapes. We learned how to draw a landscape in the impasto style of Vincent Van Gogh. 

CALIFORNIA NATIVE PLANTS

4th grade kicks off the year learning how to draw  Native Plants from visual references, using contour lines and visual texture. We developed our drawings in 3 stages...

PICASSO PORTRAITS

These portraits are inspired by "Portrait of Dora Maar" by Pablo Picasso - famous for rendering multipule perspectives in his portraiture. 4th graders used color symbolism and color theory to show us a hint of their inner selves. Take a peek!

PERIMETER, AREA AND...ART!

Inspired by Piet Mondrian's "Broadway Boogie Woogie", 4th grade teachers asked if I could do an art project to learn visually through the arts how to find Perimeter and Area in Geometry. We used graph paper to grid design our neighbo-rhoods..Really neat idea!

Contour Shoes

4th graders warmed up for this project with a blind contour exercise - no looking! This exercise forces your eye to look even closer when drawing from observation because you cannot see your paper!  

Andy Warhol Endangered Species

4th Grade chooses a complimentary pair of colors to discover what happens when you mix them together. We used Andy Warhol's prints from his Endangered Species Series for inspiration. These kids' talent blow my mind! 

California Missions

4th Grade learns and reviews watercolor techniques to mix different values of brown to render these beautifully drawn and painted Missions 3-Dimensionally!

Henri Matisse "Kelp" Forests

4th Grade had visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium earlier in the year so this lesson reinforced the excellence of KELP!
(ok....aaaaaand positive shapes, negative shapes, organic vs. geometric :) )

California Insects

Kicking off the New Year, 4th graders learned about visual texture, contour, and pattern in these Line drawings of Californian beetles, ladybirds, damselflies, butterflies and more.

Beijing Opera Masks

Who would you be if you could represent yourself differently? A villain? A King? Would you be mischievous or loyal? How can we look at the masks worn in the Beijing Opera for inspiration? Why are masks worn? How does a viewer react to a mask? What makes for a strong reaction? This lesson is a preparatory lesson for my 4th grade class, as they will be learning about Asian music through the program I work for, in the 2nd half of their school year coming up in January 2013.

Fantasy Jungles

Imagine...What it would be like to be an ant walking through a jungle? Huge plants and leaves all around you. Carnivorous plants maybe, hmmmm. What's the weather like in your fantasy? Nighttime, raining, storming, lightening?

Expressive Self-Portraits

First year teaching self-portraits ain't so bad...Especially if you show them the proportions of the face and where to put your facial features. Intimidated at first, I was astonished with the turnout of these portraits!

Contour Shoes!

Take off your shoe...(laughter, giggling, smelly feet)...put it on the table. Have your partner cover your paper so you cannot look...and draw a Blind Contour of your shoe for 5 minutes. This is how we started this lesson - to see how doing a Blind Contour actually forces your eye to look harder at the lines you are following with your eye, because you cannot see them as you draw them.

Cityscapes At Night

Teaching about value (bright or darkness of a color), is probably one of my favorite lessons to teach because it is one of the most iomportant fundamentals in art. Knowing about value, value change, and how light sources and time of day affect value, an artist will be able to make something structurally 3D, or appear to be. Value also gives comprehension to form or composition, and can also have implied symbolism.

Warm/Cool Hot Air Balloons

4th grade learns how to paint a composition using warm and cool colors. I thought hot air balloons would be a great lesson as there are many ways to decorate them, and they are just a fun subject that anyone could be excited about.

California Missions - Torn Paper

4th Grade

Monta Loma Elementary School

Mountain View, California

This lesson was a curriculum tie-in with what most 4th graders are learning about - California.

California Native Plants

4th Grade

Monta Loma Elementary School

Mountain View, California

Introducing the 4th Grade to Contour drawings of Native Plants of California ties in with the 4th grade curriculum of California History.