A Tour of Van Gogh's Room

The first graders recently took a visual tour of Vincent Van Gogh's painting The Bedroom.  Painted in the year 1888, it is of Van Gogh's room in his "Yellow House" in Arles, France.  The first graders noticed two striking things about this particular painting.  First, the first graders observed Van Gogh's thick use of paint.  Second, they commented on how cool colors were used in the backgound while the warm colors were used on the things in front.  We became familiar with the terms background, middleground, and foreground during our discussion.

Creating a Warm Chair in a Cool Room

Fold a piece of white paper in half.  Make two cuts about two inches apart in the side that has a crease.

Fold the flap and make a crease.

Unfold your piece of paper.

Push your flap through so that it makes a pop-up.

This pop-up will become the chair in the drawing.  The top part of the pop-up is the seat.  On the bottom part of the pop-up, draw the front two chair legs.

Finish the chair by drawing the back two legs and the back of the chair.  What else is in the room?  What's on the wall?  What's on the floor?

Come Swirl With Us

                                                                        

The kindergarteners have been studying the painting The Sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh.  The kindergartners have observed how Van Gogh applied paint in thick, undulating swirls.  We identified the warm and cool colors and started painting in swirls of our own, first using just the warm colors, then using the cool colors.  





Sweet Tooth

Here are a few pictures of our second graders hard at work.  Each student drew their favorite dessert, cut it out and used the cut-out as a tracer to fill in their white papers.  Once their papers were filled to the brim with sweet treats, the second-graders used black glue to redraw all their desserts.  To make the black glue, I just mixed 1 part glue with 1 part black tempera paint, and voila!

Creating a Delicious Drawing

Draw a dessert on a piece of 6"x9" tagboard and cut it out.

Use the tagboard as a tracer and fill a paper with desserts.

Use black glue (yes! black glue) to outline and draw the desserts.

One Sweet Artist

Wayne Thiebaud

Here are some images of artwork done by the artist Wayne Thiebaud.  Wayne Thiebaud's sweet paintings of desserts are the inspiration for our next second grade art project.

 

Creating Op Art

To start, draw between 5 and 10 TINY, organic shapes.

Then, outline around the shapes, drawing continuous rings around each shape.  The rings will eventually meet and extend past the edge.  Fill the entire page with rings.

Once the paper is filled, choose two complementary colors to color in the rings.  Alternate  back and forth between the two colors.

Georgia O'Keeffe

Hey Fourth Graders!  Look what I saw last week at the Metropolitan Museum of Art!  There was a whole section of the museum space devoted to Georgia O'Keeffe's artwork.  We spent a long time studying her and her artwork last fall.  I know you know a lot about her! 

See if you can answer some of the questions below..

Georgia O'Keeffe painted this mountain range over and over again. 

Do you remember where she was living at the time when she painted this?

Why do think Georgia O'Keeffe painted bones?

How is this building different from a building that you may see in Connecticut?

Why do you think this one was made differently?

What do you think Georgia O'Keeffe was thinking about when she painted this?

What was she trying to show?

What does think painting make you think of when you look at it?

Bridget Riley

While I was viewing the artwork in the contemporary section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I stumbled upon this piece by Bridget Riley.  Her Op Art is looks even better in person!

Alberto Giacometti

Here are two photos of Alberto Giacometti's artwork that I saw at the Museum of Modern Art.  I saw many more at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

At the Met...

Here is a drawing of Giacometti's famous sculpture, Walking Man.

Not only did Giacometti do sculptures of figures, but he did animals as well. 

Can you guess what animal this is?

Pablo Picasso

 The NAEA Conference that I attended last week was only a hop, skip and jump away from the Museum of Modern Art.  I went straight to the 6th Floor and worked my way down through the galleries.  Along the way, I came upon a number of works by the artist Pablo Picasso.  The third graders happen to be in the middle of a abstract self portrait project inspired by Pablo Picasso.

What title would you give this work of art?

Here are several portraits done in Pablo Picasso's famous style.  What is the name of this style of art?

That's right!  Pablo Picasso's famous style of art is called Cubism.

The next day, I saw even more examples of Pablo Picasso's artwork at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

These are not in the style of Cubism.  He did these two artworks earlier in his career.  These were done right at the beginning and in the middle of Pablo Picasso's "Blue Period".