James Goldcrown style Heart Collage

Street artist James Goldcrown  (@jgoldcrown) was the artist inspiration for the Valentines themed heart collage. 

I found the project idea HERE and just switched up the artist to James Goldcrown.

Born in West London, Goldcrown is a self-taught artist/photographer now based in Los Angeles. He is most famous for his Bleeding Hearts/Lovewall murals which started showing up everywhere on Instagram back in 2015. 

See all the steps that I posted previously about HERE. 

We started by looking at photos of his art, then watched a Youtube video interviewing him about his collaboration with Sketchers shoes. One of my students was actually wearing a pair!

I think one of the keys to this project is using really true black construction paper. Tu Ray and Crayola make good ones. I sometimes also buy a rich black cardstock from Michaels or Wal Mart.

This is a great lesson for reinforcing and practicing good cutting and gluing skills. 

Some finished Grade 4 - 6 artworks!

 

Ice Sculptures

We're in the midst of a deep freeze here where I live in Canada. So I thought it appropriate to post these ice sculptures some Grade 4,5,6 students made with myself and a Music teacher at my school. He makes elaborate ice sculptures at his house, so wanted to teach our students how to make some simple ones. 

One of the challenges of this project is that you need to have extended cold weather in order to have enough time to freeze all the water, assemble the sculptures and then have time to enjoy them!

The kids and teachers collected plastic forms that we could use as molds.

We filled balloons with water and hung them on a rope so they would freeze in teardrop shapes. We also filled and froze foil balloon letters so we could write the name of our school outside.

Here's how we made some short candles to line the walkway to our school:

Home Depot plastic buckets were filled with coloured water and froze. Kids flipped them over and stomped on them to release the block.

You can stack one on top of another to make taller candles.

Then use wet snow as glue/mortar.

Add the balloon 'flame' on top.

  

We also made an Elsa/Frozen inspired castle. We froze water in a bunch of random plastic containers. 

Then unmolded them.

Then we had a backdrop built, the kids painted it blue, and they assembles the frozen pieces in tower formations. Unfortunately, at this point, the weather started warming up, so I only got some melted pics!

 

Painted Hearts for Valentine's Day

Sometimes the best lessons for my students are the simplest lessons. For this Valentine's lesson I did some yeas ago, I just put out red and white paint and let my Grade 4-6 students paint a big heart in whichever way they wanted. It was simple, carefree and the kids really enjoy working with paint. 

You can introduce or review the term 'tints' and 'pastels', discuss pattern and texture.

They folded a 12 x 18" sheet of heavy white paper in half, drew half a heart and cut that out.

Then they painted it using tempera paint.

I love the variety of techniques they used!  These make a gorgeous display.