Plasticine Mood "Paintings"

This is a gorgeous abstract art lesson inspired by a lesson found on the Studio Sprout website. 

It uses the artist Bernice Bing as a starting point for looking at abstract expressionistic art inspired by emotions. 

I keep my plasticine stored on zip lock bags by colour. 

I pre-cut small squares of cardboard for students to work on. They were asked to think of an emotion relevant to them and try to choose colours that they felt matched that feeling. Then, in a loose and expressive way, they smeared and played with the plasticine and applied it to the cardboard however they pleased. 

Grade 4-6 artworks! I love how expressive they all turned out. 

 

Colourful Oil Pastel Paper Weavings

This is a great one day lesson that my Grade 4-6 students completed in an 80 minute period. 

The nice thing about oil pastels is you get vibrant colours and don't need to worry about drying time.

I found the lesson HERE. 

I let my students choose any colour combinations they wanted. Its a great lesson for reviewing colour theory and different types of harmonious colour combinations. We used cardstock and glued the strips onto 12 x 18" black construction paper and then I cropped them down after. 

 

Northern Lights Arctic Landscape painting

 

For this mixed-media project, Grade 4-6 students explored the beauty and ingenuity of Canada’s North. They learned about traditional igloos used by the Inuit in northern Canada—how they were carefully constructed from blocks of compacted snow and why their dome shape makes them a strong, efficient architectural structure for Arctic conditions. 

"Igloo" (from Inuktitut iglu) means "house" or "home" in Inuit languages.

Inuit are the Indigenous people of the Arctic, numbering approx 70,545 in Canada, who primarily reside in Inuit Nunangat, a vast northern homeland spanning 40% of Canada's landmass and 72% of its coastline.

After looking at photos of northern lights, students began by painting vibrant Northern Lights using watercolours, experimenting with colour blending and movement to capture the magic of the night sky. They sprinkled salt on the wet paint to create a textural effect. Let dry overnight.

They then carefully drew their own igloo on a separate sheet, adding subtle shading with pencils and blue pencil crayons to create dimension and form. I showed them how to draw one on my easel but there are many tutorials online or on Youtube to follow along with. Finally, they cut out their igloos and collaged them onto their painted backgrounds. 

These artworks celebrates both the natural beauty and innovative design of Canada’s northern landscape.

 

Exaggerated Drawings

 

This is actually a project I did in high school. I still have my original believe it or not.

It's a very valuable drawing assignment great for practicing value and shading.

This is a technique used quite a lot in advertising and design: scale exaggeration. You could also discuss the design principles; this one relating to proportion and how artists can manipulate and exaggerate proportion to express moods and experiences.

Here are the directions: Find an appropriate image in a magazine: you're going to cut off part of the image and visually 'stretch' the missing part using pencil. Using figures tends to be quite popular but it can be anything, really. If students can only find colour images, then just photocopy them so they have a black and white image to work with. Glue the magazine image onto a piece of drawing paper and then you're ready to go. The key is to make them match the photo in terms of accurate shading.  You want to fool the eye.

Grade 10-12 finished artworks:

this is Boris Johnson, lol