Mixed Media Portraits

4SM are using the elements of art to design and create self-portraits for their final assessment in our portrait unit. They are thinking about how to use the elements and symbols to communicate who they are.

Dimensions of a Face

I love it when I learn from my students, but I also love it when they learn from me! Persuading my grade 4 students that their eyes were in the middle of their head was no easy task! I measured students' faces to prove my point. And then we got to creating.... Here are some of today's masterpieces!

4 Medium Challenge

Grade 4 students have been exploring many different meduims used to create art. Today, they were challenged to create a piece of art using at least 3 different mediums. They were asked to complete an observational drawing and explain why they chose each medium.

Here are a few of the amazing artworks! 

Salt on water colour paint created a bumpy texture for the basket ball!

This students used oil pastel for the leaves and chose water colour paint for the background to create shadows -and because it was easy to paint around the many edges! 

Permanent marker was used to draw the container. Water colour pencils helped to create highlights and shadows. 

Exploring Mediums

Grade 4 students are exploring the question, "How does the medium we choose affect our final art work?". We tried making marks with many different kinds of mediums: oil pastels, markers, sharpies, water colour pencils and colouring pencils.

Some reflections:

• Pencils are better for making detailed pictures! -Alex
• Oil pastels are better for colouring in things quickly. -Teja
• Oil pastels create different textures! -Nishka
• Oil pastels can be blended. Paint cant. -Dylan
• It's easier to draw details with colouring pencils and permanent markers. -Quinten & Maria
• Markers give you more control. -Sirine
• Permanent markers were darker than the normal markers. -Amelie
• Oil pastels can give dark marks or light marks -Vazir

Next students added water on top of the marks to see what happened. They made a guess about what they thought would happen first.

• The markers almost disappeared. -Romy
• The water colour pencils blended into the water. 
• The permanent markers didn't change! - 
• I thought that the water pencils would not blend with the water. -Injoon and lots of other people!

Grade 5 Colour Challenge

Grade 5 students were introduced to the work of Wayne Thiebaud in art this week. They were then challenged to recreate the colours in Three Machines using only red, blue and yellow!

They learned about the primary, secondary and tertiary colours. A highlight was finding out that the 'paint' really was icing sugar and that the end of class collaborative project could be eaten!

Students were pleased with the results. One keen student even mixed a neutral colour very, very close to black! White was the only colour we didn't create.  

Fun times in Grade 5!

 

Recreating 'Three Machines'

It was so much fun to see students guessing what the colours would make!

Students were challenged to mix new colours with the left over 'paint'. After sharing and naming the new colours, they discovered that mixing many colours made muddy colours. They learned that these are called neutrals. There were some very interesting names created for our new colours! 

The pallets were a work of art too! 

But eating the art was the most fun of all! 

Franz Marc Inspired Animals

Franz Marc's 'Blue Horse' was a great way to begin our discussion about why it's important to know how to draw AND the importance of being creative. Grade 3 students worked through our See-Think-Wonder visual thinking routine and came up with many interesting observations and questions about the painting.

Next, we read the book by Eric Carle 'The Artist Who Painted A Blue Horse' and listened to Eric Carle talk about why Franz Marc was such an inspiration to him.

Students were very eager to get busy!

After a discussion about the use of Space when planning our art, Grade three students grabbed their very large papers and set to work, planning and drawing an animal to use the space on their page. Strategies from last day's lesson helped!

The last part was very fun! With a mixture of black paint and glue, students set to work adding dark lines of glue to their animal. Many decisions had to be made! How thick were the lines going to be? What kind of texture should they add to the animal? What lines would best suit the ecosystem and the feelings they wanted to show? 

Be sure to check back next week to see these great works of art transform as students decide how to add colour to them!