Spring Trees

First graders made these adorable spring trees. They drew the grass and trees first with pencil, then colored them with oil pastels. I always encourage them to mix colors for more realism and interest. 

They used tissue paper square to scrunch up into little 'blossoms' and glued these onto their trees. 

Finally, they added any extra details with markers. Some wanted to color their skies as well.

*I added the pink "faux frames" with a photo editor :)

Fantasy Building Designs

This is a great project when students are studying any type of architecture or building unit. It allows them to utilize all the elements they may have learned about (arches, basic shapes that make up buildings, surface texture, etc) into a 'mash-up' creative type of building drawing. 

I was inspired by this fantastic lesson on the "Shine Brite Zamorano" art blog. 

This lesson takes between 2-3 classes depending...

Although I encouraged students to make really creative and unusual building drawings, 

the majority turned out quite realistic and very castle-y or Taj Mahal-y!

Students start off by using basic shapes to sketch out a building structure on plain white paper. Then slowly add details such as arches, windows, doors and rooftops. Add decorations and surface patterns like brickwork, stripes, dots, etc. One the drawing is complete, outline it all with a black marker. I encouraged line variety (thick and thin lines). Carefully cut out the building and set aside.

Next class, on another sheet of white paper (same size), students create a background using chalk pastels. 

I limited the colors to only 2-3, so it wouldn't get too fussy, and we discussed how the focus 

should be on the building, therefore a more limited color palette was needed just to 'enhance' the building. 

One the background is nicely blended out, glue on the building (we found glue stick didn't 

really hold it that well so used a thin layer of white glue instead).

Grade 3 artwork:

Resist Easter Eggs

Easter Egg created by a 4-year old

Last minute posting of a fun and quick Easter project.

I found this project on the wonderful blog: "That Artist Woman"

This art lesson only takes one period. It's great for practising line and patterns with both preschool, elementary and middle school students. Young students can use simple lines (wavy, squiggly, zig-zag, straight, curved, etc.) and older students could research egg decorating traditions from Eastern Europe (Ukraine, Poland, Russia, etc) and find inspiration in order to create more intricate patterns.

Have egg templates ready for younger students or have older kid draw their own large egg shape on heavy white paper. Fill the egg with a variety of lines/designs/patterns using oil pastels- press fairly hard. Encourage them to use lighter colours as they show up much better in the end. Once the design is complete, paint over the entire egg with a darker color of watercolour paint. The paint needs to be fairly liquid in order to resist the oil pastels. Liquid watercolors would work great with this as they are super pigmented.

I like to provide glitter varnish to make the eggs nice and shiny. I just mixed ultra-fine white glitter with a water-based gloss varnish (like Modge Podge). Cut the egg out and that's it! If there's extra time left, you can alos glue the eggs onto another larger sheet of paper and cut out a border, like some of the eggs below.

All the eggs below were done by a wide variety of ages- from 4 years old up to adult!