Van gogh Inspired Flowers by 8th grade

Here is  some artwork completed by our 8th grade class. They created these based on Van gogh's Sunflowers.

Van gogh Inspired Flowers

     This lesson was completed by my 8th grade students. First, they were given 6 tempra paint colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple), plus black and white for tinting and shading. I did a lesson on mixing colors and using black and white to create tints and shades of the different colors. Next, we examined Van gogh's famous artwork, Sunflowers, discussing his use of the 8 elements of art. The students were then encourage to create a bouquet of flowers inspired by Van gogh. Finally, they were asked to paint their sketches using colors created by mixing the primary and secondary colors at their disposal. In the end, they created tints and shades of their colors to add shadows and highlights to their artwork. They did a great job...

"Winter Birch Trees" by 8th grade

      I found this lesson on Deep Space Sparkle blog a few years ago, and have been doing it with my 8th grade students ever since. Since then, I have seen many blogs do posts on the same project and I'm always interested in seeing how they do it. Often, teachers make small changes as they go and the project comes out a little different for each class.
     For example, this year, instead of leaving the snow area on their paper pure white, my students added a wash of the lightest purple watercolor we could make. We combined water with a few drops of purple liquid water color paint to achieve the super light color. I love the way it changed the overall look of the artwork. I did keep the tissue paper sky in the background, but one of my students missed class the week before, so I gave him some materials and said, "See what you can do!" His came out great!! You will be able to tell his apart from the others. It is the only one with a painted, solid blue sky. It makes me think I might need to create a spin-off lesson for another grade.
Here are some of the finished ones...

Bone Letters by Fifth Grade

This is a great, fun Halloween art lesson. I do it every year with the fifth grade class. I originally found it on the art blog, Art Projects for Kids. This is the link to the lesson, http://www.artprojectsforkids.org/2008/09/bone-letters.html.

This lesson involves teaching the students to create their names using a combination of different bone shapes. I show them some different shapes and give examples of how they might combine them to form different letters. Then they create their own combinations for each letter of their name. I also do a lesson on shading and light sources. We turned off the lights and shined a flashlight on some white foam geometric shapes to observe where the shadows were cast. Then they tried to give their letters a shaded look.

Here are some final pieces of their artwork. They did a nice job...

Snowmen Portraits by Grade 5

Well, it's 50 degrees out today! The sun is shining, the snow is melting, but I still have some great winter art to showcase on my blog. Check out these snowmen portraits...aren't they cute! I love all the different shapes and designs of the hats and scarves. It's like they each have their own unique personalities. Hats off to the fifth graders for creating these wonderful pictures using art sticks to add in the color. Can you see how they tried their hand at creating areas of shading on their snowmen?

                                                   I'm looking forward to some spring art!