Happy Summer!

What a year of creativity, inspiration and art making!

As we wrap up the year, students have been working hard finishing up their final projects. Here are just a few of the things that have been going on recently in the art room:

Mixed-Media Food Sculptures

Dream Vehicle Designs

Personal Logo Printmaking

As my first year at Canandaigua comes to an end, I want to thank you for sharing your students with me. They have made me proud to be a part of the Canandaigua art family and they inspire me everyday!

Have a GREAT summer!  

Still Lifes!

My second grade classes and Mr. Angelo's class just mastered still lifes!

After looking at the work of Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Cezanne, students learned all about still lifes and drawing from observation. We discussed scale, composition and realism and students challenged themselves to really study what they were drawing. We talked about oil pastel technique and blending colors to achieve realism. Students experiment with pushing harder with oil pastel, layering color and adding shadows and highlights. We learned that laying out our compositions in white eliminated the need to erase and allowed us to plan and adjust our drawings before adding color. We also learned to really LOOK at what we are drawing and discovered that shadows usually aren't black, simple things have a range of colors and highlights add dimension to our work.

After all this observing and studying we did a 180 and students were given the freedom to add a realistic OR imaginary background using the techniques we learned in class. I was so inspired to see still lifes in a starry sky, lit up by firework displays and in tropical rainforests.

Drawing from life is a challenge and it took courage and patience to complete these beautiful drawings, I am so proud of you guys!

Congrats!

With only a few weeks left of school, yearbooks are just around the corner!  

Congrats to the creative and talented artists below who's work was selected to be published in this year's yearbook!

Space in the yearbook was tight but you may also have seen some of these illustrations sent home in the Principal's News to Know:

 
I am SO proud of the yearbook illustrations created by ALL of my students, look for them as portfolios come home this month! 

Bodies of Work!

My second graders just finished learning about the bold urban art of artist Keith Haring. We studied the artist's use of form, composition, line and color in his work, and students were inspired by the exciting results that he achieved!

Students then posed their hearts out and we used those pictures to create body outlines that were transferred onto final paper in dynamic and interesting compositions. Students selected a color to paint around their bodies and filled in the negative space around their figures. We then learned about how contrast is used in art to create interest and students selected a contrasting color to use to paint the space inside their bodies.

After a little painting and layering, students were ready for a big lesson on pattern. We defined pattern and discussed how things like shape, line, size, color and imagery can be repeated to create it. By brainstorming as a class, we were able to push our ideas about pattern and learn how pattern can be used randomly, linearly and non-linearly. We found patterns in the art room, in what we were wearing and all around us! Students then worked collaboratively to create a variety of large scale patterns as a table. I was so impressed by all the different shapes and imagery that students thought of and combined to create pattern. I saw students creating number patterns, personal patterns, friendship patterns and even patterns that conveyed special messages!

We put all this great brainstorming to work as we outlined the figures in our artwork with oil pastel and filled in our bodies and backgrounds with pattern. This step really transformed these pieces to truly personal and expressive pieced of artwork.

 

There were some really challenging steps in this project but students rose to the occasion and were really proud of their finished pieces!