Light, Shadow and Value

Continuing our journey into seeing, I decided to focus on looking at light and shadow. The subtleties of change in light will  take you in if you if you let them.  What  is it about light and shadow that intrigues the artist in us?  It was a mystery and the  kids wanted to find out more.  It was also a perfect opportunity to look at value.  Watercolour lent itself perfectly for this exploration as you can see below.

Some kids painted  in big 'swooshes' while for others  made charts. 

Next week or so we will begin making collages from these color charts. 

Seeing

Open publication - Free publishing - More art

The Private Eye Journey

"Genius is the capacity to see ten things when the ordinary man sees one."

Ezra Pound

This week I decided to try The Private Eye with all of my classes.  This is where you take a jeweler's loupe and look closely at an object. As you are looking you ask yourself, what else does this remind me of? You also draw what you see, not what you know. Your descriptions become the bones for a poem.    It  was a very eye opening experience (no pun intended)!    It's with a great hope that I say it was an exploration that I believe may transcend a 45 minute art period.  Just giving the children time, precious time to sit and look at an object and explore the possibilities, explore the connections their minds make between their object and life...wow.

My Hand (like a battlefield)

..like holes of mines

form each day

red blood holes
 from lost soldiers.

cannons fire 

through the night

Chris, 4th grade

* The Private Eye loupes are wonderful but you could easily and successfully do this activity with a regular
magnifying glass or by simply looking.  

End of the Year Creations

All Hail The Creativity God , Elizabeth 2nd Grade

Necklace by Leslie, 2nd grade

Collage, Bryan 2nd Grade

Class Portraits Fun Style

 

I thought it would be fun for the kids to create a class portrait to remember this past year and their friends.
They could fold the paper to create various rectangular shapes or they could draw lines to place each student drawing in.  I projected their class list from the projector so the could write everyone's name on their portrait.   One class period did not provide enough time to finish but I let them take them home to finish and they were super excited. This was a lot of fun, it worked out perfectly for an end of the year project!   I did it with Kinder and First.