Wow!  This was truly one of those art projects, you know, THOSE ones.  The kind of project that was top notch and students all learned so much through the process.  I honestly have chills just thinking about it. This was one of the most successful art projects that I've taught in a while because each student challenged themselves and grew as an artist during the entire creation process.

I got the inspiration for this when a High School art teacher that I know posted photos of her High School students doing a similar project and I felt confident that I could adapt the project for my current 3rd grade artists.  

The goal of this project was to only use primary colors (red, blue and yellow) and white and black for this project.  That means that the skin color, shadows and highlights, hair colors, etc etc were all mixed using only primary colors!  This took some trial and error and lots of mistakes before students created the correct colors.

We started this project with mirrors in front of us.  Each student studied themselves in the mirror and drew their bust (head and shoulders) onto their papers.  

Once we started painting, students started with their skin colors.  After mixing and finding a color that worked, they painted all of their skin on the drawing.  To add highlights and shadows, they used their skin color and added blue and/or black to create shadows and added white and/or yellow for the highlights.  

They used this same technique on their hair and shirt as well.  For the background, they had freedom to do whatever they wanted.  The students worked so hard on this project and were so proud of the outcomes.  When teachers and parents walk by the art display in the hallway, they are shocked that the students mixed all of the colors themselves.

​What amazing artists I get to teach!

Mural Painting after-school Club for 3rd-5th graders is going great so far.  We've met three times now.  The first was to discuss our plan and design and the other two we have spent painting.  There are 7 students in the club and they are loving getting to paint on such a large scale and knowing that the mural could be on the walls forever!

I'll continue to post more photos as we continue.  It's so much fun watching the process of this mural come alive!

I like to spend most of my time with Pre-K artists doing stations where they move around the room spending around 5 minutes at each table.  When we do this, the students practice things like cutting, glueing, building, drawings, etc.  Although the art stations are very age-appropriate and engaging for them, I like to mix it up sometimes and do some more concrete art projects that they can take home once in a while!

We had a great time doing these lovely rainbow paintings.  It was great for their Pre-K art curriculum too because we got to learn about the color wheel/rainbow colors and connected it to science by learning that the sky needs both sunshine and rain to create a rainbow.  How fun!

We used tempera cakes to paint their rainbows and then did collages of the sun and cloud using cut paper and glue.  They have been practicing a lot of cutting and glueing this year and are showing so much progress!

These turned out so adorable and took us three class periods to complete. 

Second grade artists had a great time learning about bilateral symmetry while creating tiger paintings.  I've seen projects similar to this online many times and have always wanted to give it a try.  I'm glad that I finally did.  There are many ways to teach symmetry, and I've taught many of them but have never tried any sort of rubbing technique before now.

I chose the subject matter of tigers because they are bold and have dynamic black, orange and white patterns.  We began by folding a piece of 9" x 12" paper in half and while looking at photos of tigers heads, we drew half of it on one half of the paper.  

Once our drawings were done, the fun began.  Starting with orange paint, students painted a small portion of the painting on one side of the paper, then folded it in half and rubbed the paper together to mirror the image on the other side of the paper.  Students continued doing this for at least three classes using orange first and eventually, black and white.  They finished it off with pink and yellow.  

​This is a process of art that takes patience because it takes a while but it is really fun watching the art come to live. 

There's something about creating their own robots that child artists just can't get enough of.  The freedom of creating whatever imaginary functions on a human-like machines just makes kids super excited and creative!  As you can imagine, I love using robots to teach elements and principles of art and design.

This project was cross-curricular as 1st grade scholars were learning about lightness and darkness in their science unit.  It was awesome seeing students lightbulbs go off as they made connections to their science learning and using highlights and shadows in art class.  

To begin this project, students each drew their own large robot design on a piece of 12" x 18" paper.  They had to use lots of different shapes and be creative and silly with their designs.  Once their drawings were done, they used a light blue tempera cake to color their entire robot.  The "oooooh, ahhhhh" moment was when I demonstrated how to add a stripes of white along once side of their robot to show light reflection and a stripe of dark along the other side to show shadows.  The students said that it suddenly made the robot look alive.  Adding such a simple detail really made the robot go from looking 2-D to 3-D!  

After they added their highlights and shadows, they had fun adding lots of colors for the rest of their fun robot details.  The students had such a great time making these.  I overheard the students telling stories about their robots adventures, their powers, and their silly robot names.  

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This is definitely another project that I wish I had taken more in-process photos of.  Really though, we had so much fun making it that I forgot to take photos.  

The students enjoyed learning about Keith Haring and found his life-story and artwork very interesting.  They had a lot of questions to ask about him and his artwork.  They were especially intrigued by the idea of him creating art that was free and cheap for people to enjoy.  

I paired the students up with a partner and after looking at Keith Haring's artwork and talking about his 'stick figures' that show movement, they took turns posing for each other and drawing stick figure versions of each other onto their large white paper.

Next they used black paints and added squiggly, curvy, curly lines to fill the background space.  These were inspired by many of Haring's work that used these black lines to show movement and to add pattern.

To finish their work, they painted the figures bright colors.  The artwork was already beautiful but to make it more awe-inspiring and like Haring's wall paintings, we decided to hang these on the wall outside of the art classroom.  We spent one class period hanging these up and getting them looking just right.  

They look amazing and bring so much life to the hallway!

And I want to leave you with this cute video of the 2nd graders walking to lunch and discovering our new Keith Haring mural for the first time.  haha, they were so excited!