Welcome back to the SES Art Room!

The SES Art room kicked off the year with a "Dot" project based on the popular book, The Dot, by Peter Reynolds.

The Dot is the first book in a trilogy dedicated to creativity. In "The Dot", we meet a girl named Vashti who has convinced herself she can not draw. Her teacher dares her to make a mark. Vashti makes one little dot on her sheet of paper... which turns out to be the beginning of her creative journey!

Teachers around the world have used this book as inspiration for teaching children about expressing themselves through art.  As a result, September 15th has become International Dot day, when students make their "own mark and see where it goes".  

See below for examples of the fourth and fifth grade students who made their mark this month.

May Project: Stained Glass

Nuit De Noel, Henri Matisse, 1952

Project attributes:

• Compare/contrast scratch art process from prior lesson to scratch art process with this stained glass lesson.
• Discussion about how stained glass windows were made using a metal framework in which to pour hot, molten glass which dries hard.
• Lesson focus was based on choosing a stained glass window idea and drawing it using double lines to suggest metal framework.
• Students scratched away glass areas revealing multi-colored film below.

Vocabulary:

• Scratch cut film
• Stained glass
• Henri Matisse
• Louise Comfort Tiffany

Resource:

• Henri Matisse's stained glass windows, Internet

Art Materials:

• Scratch-lite film
• Scratch out tools
• Transfer paper
• Copies of simple stained glass windows

Examples of Student Work:

April Project: Scratch Art

Project description:

• Lesson focus was on the process of choosing an appropriate scratch art topic and the steps involved in creating a successful scratch art piece.
• Objective: show evidence of four or more textures using repeating lines and/or repeating shapes or patterns.
• Experimenting with scratch art tools and determining areas to remove completely to expose fluorescent surface beneath.

Resources: 

• Books and images from internet showing interesting textures

Art Materials: 

• Copy paper
• Art paper
• Transfer paper
• Fluorescent cardstock

Examples of Student work:

March Project: Frank Stella & Fernand Leger - 3-D FORMS

Project description:

• An introduction to our feature artists, Frank Stella and Fernand Leger's 3-D Forms
• Compared and contrasted the work of each artist.
• Discussion based on what was noticed in each painting and which style they liked the best and why.

Objective:

• Create a modern, abstract picture using 3-D forms of your choice

Resources: 

• VTS (Visual Thinking strategy using Frank Stella's work titled, LaVecchia Dell'Orto, and Fernand Leger's work titled, Mechanical Element :



LaVecchia Dell'Orto, Frank Stella, 1986

Mechanical Element, Fernand Leger, 1918-1923

Art Materials: 

• Choice of colored pencils or charcoal pencils
• Value scale

Examples of Student work:

February Project: Repousse Lizards

Project description:

• Each student chose a lizard to transfer into tooling foil with a special focus on texture and design.  Interesting lizard facts were discovered while researching each lizard.  The "relief effect" is achieved by tracing sketches into foil twice while pressing against newspaper.  A special tool is used to stretch foil textures, further creating obvious textural changes.  Permanent markers added color to this work.

Art Materials:

• Tooling Foil
• Permanent Markers

Examples of Student work:

January Project: SHADING OF 3-D FORMS

Project attributes:

• Review of how to develop line drawings of 5 basic forms: cone, sphere, cube, pyramid, cylinder
• Grey scales - a slow transition of greys from white to black
• Light source - how the light source effects how you shade your form
• Students drew their forms then using their grey scales, shaded in their forms based on where their sun was drawn

Vocabulary:

• Grey scale
• Shading
• Light source
• 3-dimensional forms

Art Materials:

• Ebony pencils
• Kraft paper

Examples of Student work:

December Project: René Magritte

The Listening Room, Rene Magritte

Project Attributes:

• Brief introduction to René Magritte and surrealists, (VTS) Visual Thinking Strategy
• Illusion tricks explored and practiced including the following
• Angles
• Diagonal lines
• Playing with scale
• Shadows/shading (optional)
• A realistic setting was created using collage format.  An unexpected object was added in Magritte style.

Resources:

• Magritte's Room with an Apple, and Room with a Rose

Art Materials:

• Collage
• Construction paper
• Magazine pictures
• Computer images
• Marker

Student Examples: