Claude Monet's Garden 1st grade

My first graders are studying Claude Monet right now! First we watched a cute video (below) to learn about the artist
Then we drew the garden and the Japanese bridge with oil pastels on watercolor paper.
Students had to use three different shades of green, have lily pads that begin large at the bottom of the page and get smaller as they go up the page. The lilies can be any color, detailed or blobs.

 We used cool colors for the water, plants, and tree reflections. I use liquid watercolors because they are the BEST!!

Before each student takes their paper to the table I swipe the whole paper with a very very wet towel.

 Then they begin with some splotches of turquoise

Then they use blue

Then bits of purple, making sure to leave the top and bottom for the green

Then finally add the green at the top for the trees reflecting on the water and on the bottom for the grass

You can add salt for texture OPTIONAL

 Then finally we use a dark green watercolor marker to add some

Here is the version with salt after it dried. I love how it created a green vignette around the top!

BunBun One Day Watercolor Value Excercise

For this project, students are working on creating value with watercolor. Some students colored with crayon because their class was shorter. We made a monochromatic bunny with tints and shades of brown and gray.

Students were requires to make a scale of value from dark to light on the bunny's face and body.

 We looked at lots of photos of bunnies, colors, shape, and had Bunbun come for a visit.We looked at Bunbuns eyes, ears, and feet.

Add eggs to make a 2 day project!

This project was modified for the younger ones below with this step by step draw a long

It is always more fun to do a still life with a live model!

3rd Grade Triceratops Skull Still Life and Birds!!

 Third grade has been producing some fun things and learning so much about color and value!
For this project, students drew a still life of a skull and painted it with black and white tempera paint being so careful to create VALUE (dark to light) using OBSERVATION of shadows and light on the object! Then they used a cool color pallet to create an interesting background with lines that created EMPHASIS on the skull!

For this projects, students looked at books about birds and our very own bird model to create a bird with an interesting setting that included a foreground, middleground, and background! 

 We used pencil to draw the birds first paying close attention to wings, flight feathers, tail feathers and beak shape

They learned blending techniques for the sky and water

Each student had a very unique composition and blended the oil pastels so nicely!

You can see my Ode to Oil pastels HERE! They are my favorite art supply!

Shrimp!

Shrimp has a FB page now if you want to follow his crazy art class bird adventures! 

                                                https://www.facebook.com/ShrimptheParrot