Contemporary Evergreen Trees Mixed Media Collage

 

I found this pretty winter lesson HERE on the wonderful Dutch Art blog "Kids Artists". 

See my previous post of this lesson HERE.

I modified the lesson a bit- instead of using bleeding tissue for the trees, we created textured paper using salt sprinkled over liquid watercolours. This took one period.

Once dry, measure out a bunch of triangles for the trees.

Outline and add details with a gold or silver marker.

On a separate sheet, paint a sky with a snowy landscape. Add some falling snow in the sky if desired. Once dry, lay all the trees out and find a pleasing composition and glue down.

Some Grade 6 results!

Handmade Holiday Cards for Hospice Staff

This community card making project was an initiative led by one of my high school art students last December. She asked if we could make Christmas cards for all the staff and volunteers who work at a hospice in our city. I had my homeroom students (Grade 6) as well as some other classes create cards. I basically provided all the supplies and let them create whatever type of card they wanted. 

Some teachers also participated which was lovely.

See my previous post from February when we made Valentine cards for the residents at the hospice HERE.

I delivered them in these two Xmas boxes I bought at Dollarama. I hope they brought some holiday cheers to these wonderful folks who work in a very challenging environment, even more challenging during the pandemic.

 

Stylized Radial Winter Landscape

 

Grade 4 - 6 students created these contemporary winter landscapes using cereal boxes, 

construction paper, tempera and markers. 

We traced large circles onto cereal boxes and cut them out. Then students painted them a chosen sky colour using tempera paint. 

Once dry, they traced the circle onto white paper and cut out hills of snow 

and glued it onto the sky circle.

Using construction paper, students cut out a variety of triangle tree shapes and glued those on. 

They used gold markers to draw on tree trunks.

Finally, they added some falling snow adding a white gel pen or paint.

Klimt Gold Patterns Collage

I found this lesson, by Art teacher Kris Fontes from Union City High School, HERE on the Incredible Art Department site and it's since become one of my all-time favourite lessons to teach. I find that all students have a high success rate with this project.

In this project, students create an elegant drawing in the ornamental, decorative and luxurious style of Austrian artist Gustav Klimt. Instead of gold scratchboard, as used in the original lesson on the IAD site, we simply used gold markers and gel pens on black paper.

You need fairly simple materials for this: magazines and/or printer, scissors, glue sticks, black paper, and gold pens/markers and books/images of Klimt's work.

I start off by showing a slideshow of Klimt's work and talk a bit about the Art Nouveau movement. Have students describe the patterns and colours used.

From Wikipedia:

Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) was an Austrian Symbolist painter. His major works include paintings, murals, sketches, and other art objects. Klimt's primary subject was the female body. He is most famous for his “Golden Phase” where he used gold leaf in his paintings. 

See all the steps posted in my previous post of this lesson HERE.

Some Grade 10, 11 and 12 artworks:

 

Hot Chocolate in Oil Pastel

This oil pastel lesson was inspired by a photo (see below) that's been floating around Pinterest for a while. It's by an artist named Heather Galler, who paints in a Folk Art style.

These were created by Grade 5 students: oil pastels on black construction paper .

These took about 2 - 40 minute periods to complete. The goal of this lesson was to have the students learn how to draw an object to look 3D. I demonstrated how to draw a cylinder form and the use of ellipses. I find Grade 5 students are a the age where they want to learn techniques for making their drawings look real. 

I also ask students to think of their favourite mug at home, or sometimes students do one of their parents' favourite coffee mugs. 

I love teaching oil pastel projects and I try to get as many as I can in with my younger classes as my older students generally HATE oil pastels, lol. They ask every year if I'm planning any oil pastel projects, haha. 

This is also the perfect project for right before the winter holidays as it keeps the kids focused and students could also make them holiday themed if they wanted to. Students had the option of gluing on a pulled apart cotton ball to add some 3D 'steam".