Radial Mountain Landscapes inspired by Jen Aranyi

These Jen Aranyi inspired landscapes have been floating around various art blogs and I was excited to try them! I looked at Cassie Stephen's excellent post for inspiration HERE. 

Jen's Instagram has videos of her painting and drawing process so I showed these to my Grade 4 - 6 class for inspiration. I pre-traced large circles onto heavy white paper. Students started by sketching out their mountains and shading them using hatching lines. They outlined this using ultra fine tip Sharpies. Then they drew evergreen trees along the bottom. Once everything was outlined, they painted the sky using watercolours. 

Some Grade 4 - 6 results:

Giraffe's Can't Dance Paintings

This is a great project to teach the idea of both figurative-type drawing and creating a sense of movement. I try and teach it every year to my Grade 5's. The book, that this lesson is based on, is also very charming and gives a wonderful message about being yourself. 

I posted about this lesson a couple of years ago and you can see more of the steps HERE.

I tend to change up the background every year or so and have done it using liquid tempera, tempera cakes (seen below) and this year I'm trying a watercolour background. 

The students draw their own giraffe dancing in a pose of their choice. They colour this using coloured pencils and outline it with a fine tip Sharpie. These are then cut out and glued carefully onto their background paper. 

This display is always a crowd pleaser and makes everyone who views it smile!

Pop Art Hearts

Just finishing up some last minute Valentines lessons. I love this time of the year with all the pinks, reds and pastel colours!

This is a cute pop art lesson that I found on the Instagram account @2art.chambers

She has a very inspiring Instagram feed! 

I didn't have any bleeding tissue paper so instead, I had Grade 5 students measure out a grid on a square of paper. Then they used watercolours to paint it any colours they wanted (this took about 2 - 40 minute periods). Once dry, the drew a large heart shape and then painted it using tempera. Once dry, they shaded around the perimeter using black chalk pastels. 

Some finished Gr. 5 work:

Warm & Cool Collages

This was a slightly tedious collage project but the final results are oh-so worth it. First, you need a lot of magazines- I ask for donations from parents and students, but find that year after year I get fewer and fewer. An alternative source is to pick up magazines from thrift stores.

Students need to choose an object to draw- it can be any object but I encourage them to choose an object that has either a warm or cool feeling to it (ie: ice cube, fire, etc) They sketch this out nice and big onto cardstock. Then they look through magazines and rip out pages that contain the colours they need. From there, they either rip those pages into smaller pieces or they can also cut them using scissors. They glue these onto the cardstock using watered down white glue. Then paint a thin layer of glue over-top to seal them. 

Some Grade 4 - 6 results:

Abstract Air Dry Clay Sculptures

This is a wonderful abstract lesson I saw posted on a high school art teachers Facebook group I belong to. The challenge was to create an abstracted sculpture that represents the students' soul/essence through form and colour. In the original lesson, the teacher used Amaco brand air dry clay. I just used this argile clay I found that the Dollar store and it worked well. Each student got one packet. This was taught to a Grade 8 class.

clay sculpture dried, before paint

They had a double period (80 minutes) to create their sculpture. I started off with a slideshow/discussion about abstract sculptures and we looked at works by Jean Arp.

The next class they painted their sculptures. Students needed to mix and blend acrylics- not just use one colour from the tube- I wanted a variety of shades and tints for more sophistication. We talked about colour and the moods they evoke. Once dry, I sprayed them with a gloss varnish.

This was a tricky project for my students who are definitely used to more realistic lessons from me- a lot really struggled to make an 'abstract' sculpture as opposed to a sculpture that looked like something!