Paul Klee Cat in chalk pastel

This is a really popular art lesson with elementary Art teachers everywhere and for good reason. It combines art history with the art elements of shape and colour. Plus all kids love animal themed art projects! This one will have all the cat lovers in your class very happy.

I've posted this project previously HERE. 

I show Grade 2 students Klee's famous work seen below. We discuss the shapes used, how he might have drawn it, the colours and colour blending and the symbols they can see within the painting. 

                     

                                

             I project the painting onto my TV so the kids can refer to it while they draw/colour. 

 

They start off my drawing the cat head shapes and then add the bird and circle above it. 

Outline everything with a black wax crayon or oil pastel.

Then we use my least favourite art supply ------> chalk pastels!

They are excellent for blending and getting a nice diffused look so work well for this project. 

Keep wet cloths at each table so the kids can wipe their fingers off. 

Some Grade 2 results:

Mother's Day Portrait Drawing

Mother's Day is fast approaching so this post is for all the DAD'S out there who read my blog, haha. (Don't think that's many to be honest ;)

I found this charming art project on a Kindergarten blog found HERE.

I showed my Grade 2 students how to draw a simple figure of a woman. I asked them to think of special details about their mom- type of hair, favourite clothing, etc. They drew it in pencil and then coloured it in using coloured pencils. 

Then I printed out little descriptive labels and they cut these into strips and 

glued them onto their drawing. 

Picasso "Blue Period" Sad Portrait Paintings

This is one of my favourite portrait lessons to teach to elementary aged kids.

I start off my showing a slideshow of Pablo Picasso's 'blue period'. The Blue Period of Picasso is the period between 1900 and 1904, when he painted essentially monochromatic paintings in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors. This was the period of his artistic development when he first moved to Paris and was struggling both financially and had many personal tragedies with his friends. 

We discuss the subjects of his paintings as well as his colour choices and how they affect the emotions felt in the paintings. 

"The Tragedy", 1903

I start off with a basic portrait drawing lesson and show the kids how to add emotions by essentially altering both the mouth and the eyebrows of the face. I have them think of something that made/makes them sad to help inspire them. They draw these on heavy white paper and then painted them using cool colours in watercolour. 

Once they were finished I had them come up to see me one at a time, and they told me what inspired their painting. I typed it as they spoke and then printed out the sentences, cut them into strips and glued them onto the bottom of their artwork. 

Emily Carr Style Forest Painting

Emily Carr is considered one of Canada's most famous artists. Born and raised on Canada's west coast, in Victoria, BC, she was inspired by the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. One of the first painters in Canada to adopt a Modernist and Post-Impressionist painting style, Carr did not receive widespread recognition for her work until the subject matter of her painting shifted from Aboriginal themes to landscapes—forest scenes in particular. Today she is best known for her stylized paintings of forests. Fiercely independent and complex, Emily Carr was a rebel, a recluse and a feminist before her time. 

I taught this lesson to a Grade 4 - 6 class. We started off by looking at a slideshow of her artwork and I showed them this video below:

We discussed the style of her paintings and then watched the following YouTube tutorial by an elementary art teacher named Lorri HERE. It was super helpful and we pretty much followed the steps except for the chosen colours. 

We discussed background, middle and foreground. Students sketched all this in using pencil. 

Then they outlined everything in black wax crayon.

Then, using tempera, students painted the sky, then the tree trunk and finally the green parts. 

Let everything dry. Then they used watered down black tempera 

and a thin brush to outline everything again.

Some of the finished artworks: