Falling for Clay

Although it's already almost the end of the school year, I am just now getting around to posting about our amazing Fall themed clay projects!  It feels like yesterday that the first chilly breezes were bringing in the Fall weather.  After living in sunny Phoenix for the past three years, I was looking forward to unpacking my scarves and sweaters and warming up some spiced cider!  Since it was time for 2nd and 5th graders to learn about clay building, I thought what better than pumpkins and colorful leaves to welcome in the Fall season!

2nd graders created their pumpkins by making two small pinch pots and attaching them together to make a hollow sphere. Students were already familiar with pinch pot construction from a project they made in 1st grade.  We reviewed how to attach two pieces of wet clay together by first scoring (scratching lines into both sides of clay) and slipping (adding water to the rough scored areas).  A hole was poked in the bottom of the spheres to allow for air to escape during firing.  We then made a stem by coiling the clay, and a leaf by using slab construction (flattening out the clay like a pancake) and then cutting out a leaf shape.  The pumpkins were fired and then glazed.  The glaze was purchased thanks to a grant from the Grandville Education Foundation!  As a final touch, students added a vine by curling a pipe cleaner and gluing it to the top of the pumpkin.

Here are the amazing results!

5th graders made Fall leaves using a clay slab technique.  They first rolled out their clay to about a quarter of an inch thick.  Then, they set a large plastic leaf onto their clay and traced around it.  By pressing the fake leaf into the soft clay, the veins of the leaf were imprinted onto the clay for a realistic effect. Finally they flipped over their leaves and laid them face down onto a smal wad of newspaper.  This curved the leaf and gave it a more organic appearance rather then just a flat look.

Here's a pic of the leaves in the kiln before they were fired.

Once the leaves were fired, students chose two speckled glazes for the front and edges of their leaves.  Thanks to a grant from the Grandville Education Foundation we were able to purchase beautiful Colorburst glazes that worked perfectly for the Fall leaves.

Here's how they turned out!

As you can see, both the 2nd and 5th graders had gorgeous results with their Fall clay projects.  Stay tuned to see how the 3rd and 4th graders do with their Winter themed clay projects!

Thanks again for joining me here at The Art Spot, see you next time.

-Miss O'Donnell

Wowing Me With Warhol, Part 2

Hi Art Spotters!

It was an exciting day in my 5th grade classes at Grand View Elementary.  Today some students finished their Andy Warhol Pop Art Animal paintings!

In my Part 1 post, I showed you a few of the outstanding animal drawings that students had completed.  Once each student was done with one drawing, we made 3 other copies to end up with a total of 4 identical animal drawings.  (Depending on when students completed this step I either copied them on the school copier, or they traced them by hand.)

Once students had all 4 completed drawings....it was time to start painting!  We used 4 color schemes for our paintings: Primary, Secondary, and 2 different Analogous Color Schemes.

The amazing thing is that students made all of their colors by mixing different combinations of the Primary Colors!  They only had Red, Blue, and Yellow paints. All other colors were hand-mixed by students! Talk about impressive!

Primary colors: Red, Blue, and Yellow

Primary color Scheme

Secondary colors: Orange, Purple, and Green

Secondary Color Scheme

The last two drawings were painted using Analogous color schemes.  Analogous colors are those that are NEXT to each other on the color wheel.  Here's a color wheel so you can see the options that students had to paint their Analogous color schemes with.  They had to pick 3 colors that were next to each other.

Color Wheel

Students had many choices for their Analogous color schemes.  Here are the two that I chose for my examples:

Analogous color scheme #1: Blue, Blue-Green, and Green

Analogous Color Scheme

Analogous color scheme #2: Red, Red-Violet, and Violet

Analogous Color Scheme

Once students finished all 4 of their paintings, the final step was to go back over their line with Sharpie Marker (making sure to wait until their paint was COMPLETELY DRY before doing this!)

Then students mounted their paintings onto 12" x 12" black paper in the arrangement of their choice.  Here are some of the amazing results!  

Warhol Pop Art Animals

Warhol Pop Art Animals

Warhol Pop Art Animals

Warhol Pop Art Animals

I am so impressed with all of my 5th grader's Pop Art Animals!! The rest of my classes will be finishing up this project next week.  

Thanks for checking in at The Art Spot.  See you soon!

-Miss O'Donnell

Wowing me with Warhol, Part 1

Hi there Art Spotters!  I'm back from a mini vacay in Arizona this weekend for my little sis's wedding.  It was a great time, but I'm glad to be back to the classroom working on our first projects of the school year!

Here's a sneak peek at what my 5th graders have been hard at work on here in Grandville.  Students have been learning all about color theory for this project.  I love color, and so do they!!  Color is one of the Elements of Art, and our world (and art) just wouldn't be as exciting without it.  So for this project I have been teaching my students about the life and artwork of the very talented Andy Warhol. Can I get a War-Hollah?!!  (sorry, I couldn't help myself!) they have also been learning about the Pop Art movement, and Warhol's influence during this movement.

Andy Warhol, Prince of Pop Art

For this project, students viewed some of Warhol's most recognized work.  Many of them had seen images of his Campbell's Soup Can collection and Marilyn Monroe screenprints before!  (One student even mentioned seeing brightly colored Campbell's Soup Cans at Target recently....I've gotta' get my hands on some of those!).

Andy Warhol, Cambell's Coup Can collection

Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe collection

I knew I wanted to make this first project a painting project that focused on color mixing with an influence from Andy Warhol's bright Pop Art colors.  So when I came across this project over on Mrs. Picasso's Art Blog, I knew I wanted to borrow it!  Thank you Mrs. Pannell (aka Mrs. Picasso)!

And so 5th graders at Grand View, East, and West will be making their very own four panel Pop Art animal paintings based on Andy Warhol's Endangered Species screenprints!

Here are two of the images of Warhol's endangered animal screenprints that students viewed before we started.

Andy Warhol, Ram screenprint

Andy Warhol, Rhino screenprint

Step one of this project was to have students draw a simplified Contour Line drawing of the animal of their choice.  (A Contour Line drawing is one which is only made up of an outline, no shading or small details allowed!) Students did not have to choose an endangered animal for this, and could look at images of animals from our classroom collection of pictures.

Here's my example (this image is before I mounted the 4 paintings.  As a final step students will mount their 4 paintings onto a 12" x 12" paper.) Also, the bottom right painting is still wet! That explains the darker areas...oops!

Miss O'Donnell's example:  Primary, Secondary, Warm analogous, and Cool Analogous color schemes

I am so excited about how these drawings turned out!! Here are a few of the 'stand-out' drawings from Mrs. Burgess's class at Grand View.  There were so many amazing drawings that I had a hard time picking just a few....so if you don't see your drawing up here that doesn't mean that it wasn't just as fantastic! There's just not enough room, maybe you'll see it posted here later when it's painted!

Aren't these amazing?!!  I can't wait to see the final product.  Our next step is to copy each of these images (students who were finished by the end of class gave me their pics and I copied them 3 times on the copy machine to save time.....students who were not finished will simply trace their original image 3 times since the paper is thin enough to see through.)

Then it will be time to paint.  Students will only get the three Primary colors (red, blue, and yellow) to paint four different color schemes on each of their four images.  This will be a great learning experience on color theory and mixing!  We'll use Primary, Secondary, Warm, Cool, and Analogous color schemes.

Stay tuned for updates and more images of this project!!

Thanks for reading all the way to the bottom!
- Miss O'Donnell