Enchanting Owls

 

all artwork from 2nd grade

Owls can be so wonderfully enchanting and exciting to draw. When the chalk blends together the softness and glow almost make them come alive.
Working with chalk always seems to be an exploration of color for the kids.  We used the sides of the chalk for rubbing the base colors, the tip for the details and tissue to blend.  

Printing Holiday Trees

 

The holiday excitement begins...
The curved lines of the trees were printed from toilet paper rolls cut in half and the lights were finger painted. I demonstrated how to use the printing tool to shape the tree. I used the simplest technique of press and lift as  I wanted to leave room for the children to make their own discoveries as they shaped their tree. You see, it's quite challenging to create a triangular shape from a curved line tool.  I was very happy to see such unique outcomes.

We've done the before with a straight line tool, click here to see that process.

Kindergarten artwork

Kindergarten artwork

Printing Holiday Trees from Gabriela Elizalde on Vimeo.

Meet the Paintbrush

Kindergarten  children have been exploring the paintbrush and painting.   They've learned different strategies for controlling the brush and for painting. In some images you will see an exploration of the blob and the outline technique along with different brushstrokes: curved, zigzag, straight,  etc.   The following week they painted an owl using the strategies learned.  Check out our video below to see the artists at work. 

Painting with Kinder from Gabriela Elizalde on Vimeo.

Line Printing + Color

 

Looking closely at the artwork above you'll notice the images are all created with straight lines. Printing with a cardboard tool is always a fun challenge.  The simplicity is what makes it so open to diversity. It's wonderfully open-ended as the student may begin with a particular idea and it develops into another or the student may have no idea in mind and just start printing to find their mind making connections to create an image.   
Other variations of this idea and the process can be seen  here.

Birds

Sebastian, 4th grade

Natalie, 4th grade

Kinder-3rd grade artists

4th grade artists

Kindergarten artist

As you can see in some of my previous posts, we've been using a lot of paint lately as we are exploring color and tint making. Although various classes are exploring this, I enjoy posing a different  project or challenge throughout the week.
The challenge was to draw a bird, whether make-believe or realistic and paint it with tints.  The second day we didn't add white paint to our palette as the pure hues would contrast against the tints.  Patterns were added on the third day with markers or paint.