Art - Northway - K-3

Quarter 2, Week 2, 2017                                                                                                            Northway Art K-3

Kindergarten:  Element of Art – Value

Portraits by artist, Modigliani

   

Students completed self-portraits inspired by the artist Modigliani.  We studied both the simple oval face shapes in his paintings, the exaggerated features and the background value and texture of the paint.

This was a mixed-media project requiring many steps and a focus on fine motor skills---cutting, tracing, coloring, ….and more cutting!

Literature:  The House in the Night 

We read a beautifully illustrated book, The House in the Night. Inspired by the images in the book, we began to practice drawing stars, stars, and more stars.

First Grade:  Element of Art – Texture

 Literature:  The Mixed Up Chameleon by Eric Carle

Students drew the front page illustration from the book by Eric Carle.  In our sketchbooks, we also drew from images of real chameleons.  We noticed the color schemes of chameleons, and the texture of their colorful skin.  The images we looked at showed chameleons often having green, yellow, and blue colors. We learned from the book that when chameleons are warm and have eaten, they are bright green…...and imagined them being quite happy. 

We learned that often in nature, analogous color schemes are common.

Second Grade:  Element of Art – Shape; Value

We finished studying facial proportions and completed self-portraits inspired by Picasso, Cubism, and the photography of David Hockney.

Continuing the discussion on human proportions, we looked at the image of Vetruvian Man by Leonardo Da Vinci.  In order to fully understand the relationship between the proportions of the human body (our very own bodies) and basic geometric shapes, we traced ourselves in chalk in the parking lot……with a lot of help from some wonderful parent volunteers. We tried our best to “freehand” the square shape.  The circle was created with an improvised compass of string tied to chalk. 

Second graders began to study value and how to achieve this in pencil drawing using a very soft lead pencil and a tortillion to blend.  However, we preferred to call this blending tool by its’ other name, which is a “stub”, because Ms. Northway had fun pronouncing this in her native Kansan accent. 

       

Third Grade: Element of Art – Texture

Third graders have been preparing drawings and color swatches in preparation to paint a collaborative copy of Van Gogh’s Starry Night in acrylic paint on canvas.

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