Mixed Media Insect Drawings

This is a really cool lesson using transparency sheets, sharpies and paint pens layered over a tissue paper collage background.

I saw the lesson on the fabulous Talley Street Artists Instagram account.

I taught this project to a mixed class of Grade 4-6. They were all successful with it.

First class: create a tissue paper collage using watered down glue and tissue paper onto cardstock (it should match the size of the transparency film). Let dry. These curled up ALOT during the drying process and was a huge pain both flattening them and trimming them!! Allocate time for that.

I had pre printed out a few sheets of a variety of insect clip art. Students chose one and traced a variety of sizes on insects onto the transparencies using sharpie. They were so excited to be able to trace, lol.

Then they chose three paint pens and added lines and patterns, dots and outlines.

Then we taped them onto their tissue paper background using double sided clear tape.

They look so cool!! This project's a keeper :) It took two 80 minute classes in total.

 

Jim Dine 4 Hearts Art Project

Here's another fast and easy Valentine's art project with an art history component. 

I saw this on an Instagram reel from @scholtenart. I altered the last time a bit.

This was the first project I did with a new set of Grade 4-6 students. Honestly, it was easy for alot of the older kids, but the boys, especially, needed help and reminders with cutting and gluing and all those fine motor skills that boys sadly seem to lack compared to girls. This took my classes one 40 minute period to complete. 

This is the first year I've tries tempera paint sticks and they are fantastic! It's like drawing with a really slick, smooth, colorful glue stick!

I pre-cut heavy white paper into squares (9" x 9") and then pre-cut coloured photocopy paper into squares that would fit onto that in 4th (I can't really explain math, lol)

Students covered the white paper with patterns using paint sticks.

Then they chose two squares of a colour, stacked them and cut out a heart shape. 

Review positive and negative space.

Glue stick these onto the background like so. Then we used black and white pencil crayons to add some shading and highlights to the hearts. 

I love how fun and colourful these turned out!

 

Compass Rose Magazine Collage

 

This collage project was a really good freebie I found HERE. 

This is a great lesson for when you need Substitute Teacher like I did last week. 

The project is simple enough for someone not trained in Art to teach, yet engaging enough to keep the kids interested and working the entire class. 

It also reinforces good cutting and gluing skills.

I left this lesson for both my Grade 4-6 class as well as my Grade 7-9 class.

You simply need old magazines, scissors, Sharpies and glue sticks.

See my previous post about this lesson HERE.

Grade 7-9 compasses:

Grade 4-6 compasses

Poppies Collage for Remembrance Day

This is a new poppy project I tried this year wiht my Grade 4-6 students. In all honesty, it was too easy for them, but we needed a quick project we could do in one period (80 minutes) and this fit the bill.

The only part that needed to be completed the class before was the students making the textured grey background paper.

I altered this project slightly from the one I saw on the fellow Canadian website 'That Artist Woman".

See her post with all the steps HERE.

We used really watered down grey tempera paint mixed with silver metallic paint. 

Water it down to a runny cream consistency. 

Cover with plastic wrap, make lots of wrinkles and let dry a few hours. 

When you peel of the plastic wrap, you get a really cool textured pattern.

Using painted green paper, students cut out long, thin, wobbly stems as well as jagged leaves. 

Glue those down.

Using red tissue paper, students cut out three different sized circles and 

layered them together and glued them down. 

Cut out black paper and glue in the center.

You can see the bouquet of poppies that we looked at beforehand, to get a good sense of what poppies look like in real life.

Grade 4-6 results!