Spaceships

Every year, students look forward to creating collaborative spaceships in 5th grade.  This year, students choose their groups, brainstormed the theme, source of power, and design, and created a 3D sculpture.  Students thought like artists, persisting through failure, experimenting, playing, and collaborating.  On the last day, students presented their creations to the class.  I am always amazed with the problem solving, imagination, and team work that goes into these ships!

Working on the ships:

Problem solving- supports for the wings

Reflective satellite 

The flaps wouldn't stay closed so this group designed a new
latch system using caps and yarn.

Making a salt water base for their ship.

"Look, we discovered a new technique!" Students representing fire with marker and tinfoil.

making a control panel

Reflections:

Investigating Portraits

4th graders began their investigation of portraits by looking at two examples of portraits.

c. 1792 by John Trumbull        c.2016 by Robert Otto Epstein

Students used a thinking strategy to look at these works- What do you see?  What do you think?  What do you wonder?  It is always inspiring to hear their ideas!

We talked about how long ago, western artist were really concerned with making realistic images.  Students discussed that this might be because there were no cameras!  Now, we can easily create a realistic portrait with the snap of the button and artists have the freedom to experiment.

We ultimately will create some abstract art representing people, but we first started with some drawing techniques.  Artists look closely and notice details.  Students had the challenge of looking closely at a partner and drawing them, without looking at their paper!  This is called a blind contour drawing.  Draw what you SEE, not the image you have in your head.  Not only is this exercise good at training the eye, it is a surefire giggle inducer.







Students also made observations about their faces, and created quick realistic sketches in their art books.

Up next we will be creating abstract artworks representing someone else in our class!  Stay tuned.

Monster Self-Portraits

Second graders began the year by creating art about themselves.. well, kinda about themselves.  They created portraits of themselves as monsters!  To begin this trip into monster making, we read Peter McCarty's book, Jeremy Draws a Monster, and looked at monsters from Pixar's Monster's Inc.  There is a great video in which animator Ricky Nierva talks about the process of designing Skully and Roz.

http://www.pixar.com/behind_the_scenes/Character-Design

 Students then used the planning process to design some ideas for their own "monster me."


Finally, students used a combination of sharpies, oil pastels, crayons, and watercolor paint to complete their artworks.  Students had the choice of adding salt, rice, or saran wrap to the wet paint to create new textures.

What would you look like if you were a monster?