3rd grade landscapes

Mrs. Lipsky's third grade students were learning about landscapes and how depth is achieved on two dimensional surfaces. We discussed what the artist must do to "trick the eye", by making objects appear farther away or closer to the viewer. For these landscapes, the students were to create a reflection. I was impressed how well these students achieved the goal!

Study of DEPTH with 3rd grade

Teaching depth on a two-dimensional surface is not always an easy thing to convey to young students. The goal is to get them to understand "portrayed space" and to know how to create the illusion, by placement, size, and color of objects and the foreground, middle ground and backgroud. These 3rd grade students used two art mediums (well, really three) to put togther this composition of fish.
They were able to use the new Crayola color sticks (like colored pencil without the wood) to draw and color in their tropically colored fish on seperate pieces of black paper. They could also do a couple of underwater plants if they wanted. Using cool analogous colors of tempera paint, they painted in their backgournd using lots of overlapping of plants, rocks, etc. Then oil pastels were uses (again, only cool colors) to embellish the background. Fish were cut out of the black paper and glued onto the cool colored background giving an illusion of depth.

Do they make you want to go there???

Our After School art students are producing some beautiful work. Below you can see some of the landscapes that they painted on textured paper. They first glued on various textures onto their paper and then painted on top, adding interest and variety to the final piece.

Wallpaper Still life

This was a wonderful project done with 3rd grade students.
* First a lesson on DEPTH and how artist achieve this on a flat surface.
* We talked about CONTRAST and how they would have to think about their wallpaper choices so the viewer could make out the objects.
* The students then drew a plan of their still life objects and where they would place them in the composition.
* Then students were given a piece of cardboard and a whole lot of scraps of wall paper. They really went to town, designing their still life, using all the patterns and textures available.
* Finally, the students were able to embellish and clarify with oil pastels to enhance the final piece.

This was a fun project,definitly worth repeating! Check with local stores that carry wallpaper and ask if they would donate their old books of wallpaper samples. You can usually get more than you need.