Fourth grade artists have been busy creating continuous line drawings, masks inspired by contemporary artist Kimmy Cantrell, and crime prevention posters for the police department. Whew!
We begun the continuous line lesson by warming up with an exquisite corpse exercise. In groups of 4 each person drew just one part of a figure/person without seeing what the previous person drew. For example, one person drew the legs, while the other drew the body, and another drew the head. May sound confusing without actually seeing the process, but it sure is fun to see what the groups come up with!
For the independent drawings students divided their paper into 4 sections. Everyone started with buildings in the top section, and then continued and transformed the lines that made up the sides of the buildings to become different objects in the other 3 sections.
Here Ollie is "helping" me grade . . . .
Students then created masks inspired by Kimmy Cantrell. He believes in creating unique art, and celebrating our differences. He also tells personal and sometimes emotional stories in his masks by carefully picking out shapes, patterns, and colors.
Students created their masks with wallpaper and construction paper. Please excuse the crowded bulletin board, but I just had to show these off!
January 22, 2012
Before winter break our wonderful 4th grade artists created these illuminated letters out of tooling foil. We learned about the history of illuminated letters, and many students knew what I meant when I said "the fancy first letter of some books". To create these relief artworks we used pointed wooden sticks to push the foil up and down for the letter and boarder designs, then students added color with sharpies!
Currently 4th grade is learning about continuous line! This past week we talked about the contemporary skateboard artist Don Pendleton, and did a surrealist group drawing exercise called the exquisite corpse. Students drew a figure together by folding a paper into thirds and drawing the head, body, and feet separately and on different pieces of paper. Hard to explain, but fun to do! The final artwork of this lesson is a continuous line drawing where the line continues in 4 different sections, each section having a different object created from the same line. You will see what I mean very soon!
December 3, 2011
It's portrait time again in fourth grade! Students will be finishing up portraits inspired by Andy Warhol this week! The past couple weeks we have studied proportion along with Andy Warhol's pop art. What a funny combination! Instead of doing abstract portraits like before, now we are learning how to draw a face accurately. A challenge that our fourth graders are rising to very well! Our portraits are inspired by Andy Warhol's colorful prints of Marilyn Monroe. I can't wait to show off the fourth grade artworks to you very soon!
In the meantime, here is an "extra" project done by two artists!
November 6, 2011
Fourth graders just finished wonderful landscape paintings/drawings inspired by Folk Art. We talked about foreground, middleground, and background, and how to overlap objects that are near and far. I am so proud of how these works turned out!
October 21, 2011
Fantastic artmaking continues with our fourth grade artists! We are studying color and value. Students created tints and shades of the primary colors, and combined that knowledge with what we learned about tessellations by artist M.C. Esher. Check it out!
September 24, 2011
Happy fall all!
Fourth grade is finishing up their abstract/cubist Picasso Portraits. And they look fantastic! I'm so proud! (Click to enlarge. More photos soon!)
Next our artists are going to learn about value and tessellations, the meeting place of art and math!
Soon I will be going over who got into art club (first come first serve) and the dates we will be meeting in late October. I am thinking, because of popular demand, that there will be a Fall group and a different Winter/Spring group.
September 9, 2011
Hey cool cats!
Welcome to the fourth grade page!
Right now in art fourth graders are learning about Cubism and Pablo Picasso. Cubism is taking multiple view points of objects and/or people and "scrambling" them together to create one artwork!
Students recently created collaborative artworks together. In groups of 4 or 5 students cut up magazine images and glued down the pieces to assemble a WEIRD cubist portrait. Because lets be honest, sometimes weird is just more fun!
(Click on the pictures to enlarge)
Soon you will see the cubist portraits fourth graders are painting. I can't wait to show them off!
