Paper Cuts II

A second installment of patterned Paper Cuts as posted back in August. These are courtesy of a year 4 class and happened as another spontaneous gap filler for 15-20 minutes. The class had some small (maybe 15cm) coloured paper squares that seemed to be left over from something else. I think having larger paper would have given the students more design scope and room to navigate their scissors, but it is nice to find ways of using up left over odds and ends.

Zebrafied

We have a cluster of small artworks featuring Zebras on our sunroom wall. I had been thinking about fresh art ideas when I re-noticed them. I have been trying a number of ideas based on silhouettes lately and suddenly I saw yet another possibility – I decided to ask my students to “zebrafy” a chosen silhouette.

To “zebrafy”, I explained to the mildly bemused students, is to give any silhouette you choose the characteristic black and white stripes of a Zebra, and to make the white stripes disappear into the background or surrounding negative space. These are the impressive results of the first lesson with a year 6 class. I was excited by their responses and am confident I can better deliver the lesson next time, having ironed out a few kinks with this inaugural zebrafying. 

Once the students had a silhouette in mind they did some practice sketching before repeating their favourite outline in a light lead pencil on their art paper. It was to be large on the page and not overly intricate. Next they added their planned zebra stripes, still in lead pencil. To finish they painted in every second stripe black, and once dry erased any visible pencil lines (ie at the top and bottom of all white stripes). Hence the "white" stripes are just paper white rather than painted white.

Obviously it depends on the shape of the individual silhouette, but following are a few things I'll remember to make clear in future. Both the outside edge stripes need to be black and if there are any sharp corners or curves they will need to "happen" in a black stripe to prevent them disappearing from view. And to make sure an object doesn't get lost in the negative space behind I think it would be helpful to make the black stripes a little thicker than the white ones.

An eclectic collection of zebrafied silhouettes from radioactive warning signs to peace signs, animals to automobiles, hands, robots, guitars, skulls and freshly bitten ice-creams.

Musical Vibes II

A second installment of Musical Vibes, this time at the hands of a 4/5 class. These vibrant moments are inspired by the artist Paula Cox and her jazz and classical music scenes. A number of these students obviously have more contemporary leanings in their musical tastes! It's always good seeing new ideas and influences coming from the students.

Fish Finger Prints

I usually subscribe to the mantra "less is more", but I'm still in two minds as to whether that applies with this lesson! Although for the kindergarten class who created these artworks, getting their fingers in the paint was reward enough. Maybe it would be more exciting if the children were able to add some seaweed or sand, or maybe these paintings should float home to adorn the fridge as they are — what do you think?

The blue water background was made with some slightly thinned regular classroom paint, painted on with brushes. I tried to encourage the children to notice and deliberately make water-like lines and patterns with their brush strokes. Next, each child was given four rectangles of paper, and they chose four colours before making separate "fish finger" monoprints.

The prints were made using the same technique described in my Finger Paint Printmaking post, except in this instance they drew fish instead of lines. Once dry, the children cut out their fish and stuck them onto their watery background. Most of the children were handier with the scissors than I expected, although a number of students found drawing the fish in the first place quite challenging. A day in kindergarten is always full of surprises though!

Cloudscapes

I was (and am) really taken with these cloudscapes painted by a recent 5/6 class. My favourite thing about them, and probably my personal benchmark for a great art lesson, is that each students' art is completely unique. Every child chooses their colour, their lines, their shapes, and it becomes their own.

The class was in the thick of a weather unit and had been learning about the science of clouds all week. I made a brief photo slideshow of sky scenes with various cloud types, formations and colours. We viewed this and discussed the colours and light we could see, and how they might imitate these. Some sketched a few pencil guidelines first, others went straight for the paint. The next day a few students added some touches of oil pastel too.

The very bottom left is just a very close crop of someone's blue to complete the four way window which seems to be my default display mode. I've been posting mostly older students work of late, but I will endeavour to have some work by younger students to share next week. Yes, posting once a week is all I can manage — I'm in awe of how prolific some of my fellow bloggers are!