Holiday Parody American Gothic Ornament/Card!

2nd graders had a good laugh and learned about the famous painting "American Gothic". We learned that American Gothic was a milestone for the Iowan artist Grant Wood, and was accepted to be part of the collection at the Chicago Art Institute (I showed a picture of myself taken with the actual painting). We even revealed some fun facts about the painting: The 'farmer' in the painting infact is no farmer at all, but Grant Wood's dentist who posed with costume, and the 'farmwife' is in fact Grant Wood's sister "Nan" that posed for the painting. "American Gothic" gets it's name in relation to the center window on the farmhouse because it's a Gothic architectural window.

I let students know that no worries if you don't celebrate
Christmas holiday. Turn your American Gothic into a Mr. and Mrs. Frosty snowman!

Then we looked at some hilarious student renditions of their own holiday or winter themed parody. I randomly fell upon an image search which led me to pictures of students work on a website, so I wish I could take credit for this originalty, but can't! However, pass this on because the students love it! We looked at each of the students' examples and talked about how you would go about making it, what they used, and what changes were evident from the original "American Gothic". We talked about all the possibilities for materials. Oil pastels give good solid coverage on a copy along with markers, color pencils are great for detail and are nice and bright along with crayons.



love the giant bell instead of a pitch fork! Clever!



I shrunk down a copy to about 5 1/2" x 6 1/2" and washed out the copy a bit. Then I cut a bunch of holiday color (blues, greens, reds, yellows) construction paper (to glue to the back before paper punching to make into an ornament if they chose) and also made copies of a 'clothing template' so they could cut out the template and trace on scrap construction paper to glue on and size clothes easier.



I lolve the sequin earring and detail scarf in the pocket!

After coloring in everything and adding detail to the background, students cut out the American Gothic. Then glued a piece of the same size construction paper to the back. I encouraged students to write the date and/or a holiday greeting to transform it into an ornament or card/present. I had ribbon, yarn, sequins, and cotton balls out to pull apart for faux fur fluff!



tracing the 'clothing' template on scrap blue paper





Texture Grant Wood Landscapes

5th graders just finished up learning about Iowa native Grant Wood famous for his iconic American style, capturing and expressing Iowa Americana Heritage, textured, lush, farmland landscapes, and of course, his prize winning "American Gothic"
 

Myself with Grant Wood's "American Gothic" at the
Chicago Art Institute. I bet you think you know it's a painting of a
farmer and his wife. NOPE! Grant asked his dentist and sister, Nan, to
model for the painting! It's 'gothic' because he used a Gothic Architectural
window for the window on the farmhouse. Now you know! Read "Getting to Know
the World's Greatest Artists: Grant Wood".

Grant Wood's "Young Corn" painting


Students focused on a very famous Grant Wood landscape painting called "Young Corn". We learned about his famous sphere-like textured trees and landscape and tried our hand at making a young corn of our own and focusing on these famous traits!

First we drew wavy lines for the rolling farmland hills, talked about perspective, how trees were very large up close and smaller far away, and learned how to make a basic large circle and fill it with tiny spheres for texture the trees and bushes.


Use pencil to draw out the sketch of the landscape and focus on lush bushes and trees and rolling hills





We also talked about how there were many tints, shades, colors of green within the painting that added depth. So each table got a coolwhip container of many crayon shades & tints of green along with sky blue (sky) and browns (farmland and skinny tree trunks).  After pencil, we traced over any pencil lines with many different colors of green, tracing over pencil HARD to get those bold contrasts.


Then comes the best part, coloring in with TEXTURE PLATES! We put the texture plates underneath the paper of the outlined area you want to color in, and rub/color lightly in the area! It picks up the raised texture from the plate and adds beautiful contrast variety over the composition. Students loved the texture plates and really emphasized the concept of texture in Grant Wood's paintings.

I MADE our texture plates by recycling thick pieces of cardboard someone donated and simply drew patterns with Elmer's GLUE and let it DRY! The glue dries raised so when a rubbing is done it picks up the 'texture'.