Mouse Paint! Primary colors and color mixing

Kindergarten has been learning about colors and other elements of art. We have talked about the primaries but now we're moving on to secondary colors and how they're made! We read the book "Mouse Paint" that tells a "tail" of how 3 mice do some color mixing of their own and learn how from the primary colors (blue, yellow, and red) new colors such purple, green and orange are made. What a great book to show and explain color mixing! We had fun and use some old, boring brush---we used FINGERPAINT to do our mixing!!

I got smart about finger paint. I bought these inexpensive squirt bottles from Wal-mart. Then I wrote the names on the papers and squirted a little dot of each color. Then students mixed inbetween colors to make the secondaries! Then when dry, made copies of the mice for students to cut out and glue down!

 

Piet Mondrian and the Primaries!

Kinders learned about the primary colors (yellow, red, blue) and about the famous Piet Mondrian. We used black cut thin strips of construction paper. I showed students how to make a with tic tac toe grid. You might want to have really wide rows, or really close together rows. Use baby dots of glue on the strips to glue down. Then pick one square for red, one for yellow, and one for blue. Then give the strips, if too long hanging off the page, a "hair cut" (cut off the ends:) ).

Michelangelo, Renaissance master....and Ninja Turtle

 4th graders learned all about the Renaissance master, Michelangelo Buonarroti. At this point, rounding out our Renissance unit, I wondered if students picked up on the names Leonardo, Donatello, and now Michaelangelo. I asked students if they've heard of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The class erupts. DID YOU KNOW THAT THE NINJA TURTLES WERE ALL NAMED AFTER RENAISSANCE ARTISTS?! Splinter must have been an art lover.
As for Michelangelo the artist, he had natural talent even from a very young age. We learned all about the history of his masterpieces and even what he was like as a young boy. He loved chiseling sculptures out of large blocks of marble but also was an amazing painter. We looked at some of his very famous works such as David the sculpture and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which Michelangelo painted while laying on his back on scaffolding.  As a class we wanted to experience what that must have been like to paint an endless ceiling laying on your back.



 Students were given a photo copy of "the fingers touching" of Michelangelo's God creating Adam from the Sistine Chapel ceiling. We then taped them to the under side of each table to act as the 'ceiling'. We talked about Do's and Don'ts of safety with paint. Each table moved and stacked their chairs to put to the side so we could easily lay underneath the table. We used flesh tone to paint in the hands and then used other fun colors to paint around the background.



We also talked about the famous David marble sculpture made by Michelangelo. We heard in the video that he "needed some clothes". SO that brought us to the art careers discussion....fashion design!

We talked about how fashion design not only means designing clothes, but there are many careers based on this concept! Costume design for movies/sets, costume design for musicals/theater on stage, designing for stores, the fashion worlds making new trends, dand even being a designer for celebrity clients (we definately chatted about "Project Runway").

Students used markers and colored pencils to draw new styles on top of the famous David. But we needed a female model too to wear some feminine style clothes too! So we used Botticelli's "Venus" from "Birth of Venus" paintings. Don't worry, we had swimsuits on them that the students then colored over. :) Students came up with some amazing new styles! They loved this art lesson!

              

3-D Van Gogh Sunflowers on Table

2nd graders learned all about Vincent Van Gogh as an artist and made our own 3-D version of his famous Sunflower painting study below.




2nd graders first drew with pencil Vincent's vase. We drew these on a small slip of paper and showed a short cut on how to start the vase from the bottom of the paper so it's flat on the bottom. Then we talked about how to draw a sunflower. It is different from the traditional daisy most students know how to make. We talked about how the center is a large brown circle and how the petals are short and pointed, and there's lots of them. We agreed it did look like a sun! Name/class on the back in the middle (for when they get cut out!)

 After drawing, I let students know that they could either use oil pastels or crayons to color. First we outlined the vase with yellow. Color in the top stripe solid. Then yellow oranges and yellows for the sunflowers and green stems.

 Then I had containers of watered down yellow paint to be like "yellow watercolor" but everyone's was the same consistancy so this worked great! (Becky Brandt, you taught me everything!) Paint over the top so it's like a crayon resist! Next, get a sheet of yellow 9x12 construction paper. Fold in half. Paint one side with watered down brown paint for the table.

Brown watercolor on one side

 Let dry for next time! (We watched "Getting Know the World's Greatest Artists: Vincent Van Gogh" for half the time to learn about the artist and did the first half of this project). Now once everything is dry, fold the yellow constrution paper in half. Cut two slits ON THE FOLD half way down.

 

              Open up and pop out the middle, make fold so it then looks like a chair.

I told students to put glue on the 'wall' the part that sticks out. Then cut out the flowers and vase and glue on so it looks like the vase is sitting, NOT floating on the table. Viola! Vincent Van Gogh 3-D sunflowers!

Painted Paper Owls

 

1st graders made painted papers and then turned them into these awesome fall owls! I had paint containers with tempera paint with the colors, yellow, orange and brown. I had 2 yogurt cups with 2 pencils in each (so each table had 4 pencils total).

 First step was writing their name and class in the middle on the back of 2 sheets of 12x9 white thicker drawing paper(so when they cut stuff out their name is already on it!). I had students paint both papers with paint in order of my direction. Students had 2 minutes per color. First we stuck out paint brush in yellow to paint....5...4....3....2...1.. hold your paint brush up! Next color is....ORANGE, GO! Then another 2 minutes and so on. I explained it's okay to have the same paint brush in the colors as long as you go in my color order because it won't mess up the paint color! Then students put down their brush.

Then students brought papers to the drying rack and then rinsed brushes, cleaned tables and hands!

The next time when their two painted papers were dry we followed these steps. Pick one of the papers for the body. Cut the bottom two corners off. On your other sheet of paper cut out 2 triangles for the ears. Glue ears on top of body. I had brown rectangles of paper for the 'tummy' (5x7) and had triangle tracers to set on top and cut out. Glue on brown tummy. To trace eyes, just dump out the pencils from the yogurt containers and trace the yogurt containers onto slips of white paper for the eyes! Cut out and glue on. Use a black marker for the pupil of the eyes. For the feet, cut yellow construction paper rectangles (2x 5). I showed students how to draw a zigzag and cut out the triangles for the feet and beak. Glue on! Done!

 

 

 

Indian Corn with Kinders!

 We got into the November and fall mood with beautiful Indian Corn! We made these by doing finger painting dots! Each table had a container of 4 different colors of paint. By Miss Oetken controlling the ORDER and how long ("Wait for the signal to start and stop. Hold your finger in the air when you hear the signal to stop.Wait to hear the next color!") they were applying paint. With one finger,  holding it up to show they were ready (I always joke, only the nice fingers are invited to this party. No naughty fingers allowed!:) ), I could call out the color they were supposed dot onto the corn copy and make sure we weren't mixing all the colors-making sure everyone was on the same page using the correct technique. I kept telling them to "dot to dot to dot.." and demonstrated the motion. "Here's what I don't want to see,(using a blending motion back and forth). "Don't use your finger like a paint brush or it won't look like the kernels of corn we looked at. I"m looking for the dot to dot to dot to dot". I also

 

 encouraged students to use the same finger. "We are going in a color order where it won't hurt the color your same finger goes into next! It's ok today!" Next time, cut out the corn when dry.

For the husk to have some texture, all I did was peel back some cardboard (the top layer rips off and the middle is revealed to have some corrugated cardboard texture) and then cut them into squares to provide rubbing texture plates. Have students trace the husk template with a pencil on the brown paper. Slide the texture plate underneath the brown paper, then use the side of a brown crayon to rub on the brown paper to pick up the texture underneath! Finally cut out and glue the husk to the top of the bunch!

Help! Is Impasto Impossible!? Recipes?

HELP! We're studying Van Gogh and his heavy, thick, distinct, brushstrokes. I really want to make impasto for my students, scrape it on in a picture form, then paint over when dry. RECIPE?! HELP! What to use to make large amounts! Anyone out there with ideas? And it needs to be in expensive in large amounts:) Help soon!:)