Lessons for visual art education – where it's about the process, not the product
Tag: elementary school
Description of the Unit – While outside on a beautiful fall day, students observed Autumn leaves, noticing the colors, shapes and textures of each leaf. Back in the art room, students used their observations to create their own vibrantly colored fall leaves.
Description of the Unit – Students will learn basic sewing techniques to sew a simple image onto burlap
Continue reading “3rd Grade – Colorful, Fun Basic Sewing Sampler”
Description of the Unit – Students will explore color and shape as they create a cat face modeled after Klee’s geometric and colorful “Cat and Bird.”
Continue reading “2nd Grade – Paul Klee’s Whimsical Cats”
Description of the Unit – (Not a unit per se, as we only spend a couple of class periods on this.) Students celebrate the arrival of spring by creating Sakura, or Japanese cherry blossoms, in the most amusing way…
Description of the Unit –
Students will use a variety of artistic techniques to create a bright, vivid and wildly textured magnified dragon eye. When you look through the students’ dragon eyes below, note how remarkably unique each one is: it speaks to the fact that by 5th grade, many students are really beginning to hone in on their personal artistic styles!
Description of the Unit –
Students delve into a particular period of Paul Klee’s art, the “Magic Square” series. Students use their observations of Klee’s work to create their own cityscape in oil pastels, focusing primarily on geometric shapes and using one tone of color dotted with its complementary color.
Description of the Unit –
Yayoi Kusama is one of my favorite contemporary artists. Her irreverence, originality, rebelliousness and whimsy have won my heart, as have her personal struggles with mental illness. An artist whose work always surprises and delights, I love to bring her life story and work to my students.
Together we explore and discuss the work of this seminal Japanese artist, whose pioneering installations have enthralled visitors to her work over the last several decades. Using her iconic polka-dotted pumpkins as inspiration, students will emphasize the elements of line, color and shape, and well as principles of pattern, repetition and movement, in their own brightly colored pumpkins.
Description of the Unit –
Students will learn a little about the history of marbled paper, and will observe the different kinds of designs known to the craft. In groups they will then make their own marbled paper
Description of the Unit –
Students will explore the history of found object sculpture and create numerous sculptures of their own in a play-based approach with a variety of objects.
Continue reading “1st Grade – Found Object Sculpture”
Description of the Unit –
Students will explore Andy Goldsworthy’s ephemeral land art, then venture outside to come up with their own environmental sculptures.
Activity statement –
Andy Goldsworthy is known as an environmental or land artist. What this means is that he uses natural artifacts—branches, leaves, rocks, ice, etc.—to create his sculptures and installations. Goldsworthy’s art is also temporary. He never creates anything that won’t eventually be destroyed by waves, wind and natural processes. Goldsworthy invites the viewer to contemplate the ephemeral, transitory beauty of the natural world. His works involve the use of pattern, color and balance. Interestingly, all of the color in his work comes from the objects themselves, never from him painting any of it. So for example, if you look at the image that looks like a tree trunk ringed with glowing light or fire, he simply used fallen gold and orange leaves to give it that effect.
In the K-8 Art Studio with Anita Sagastegui 