Art Projects (Continued)

Blended Seascapes - Inspired by Camille Pissarro

The artwork of Impressionist, Camille Pissarro, inspired the following landscapes made by blending chalk pastels and white tempera paint. We were out of tempera at the school where I volunteer, so we had to use watered down acrylic paint. Not sure the effect was the same. Anyway, the point was to learn how to use pastels and how they may be blended together in a multi-media art project.

Three Tree Landscapes

Jean-Francois Millet was a Naturalist painter who influenced the artwork of Vincent Van Gogh. He painted peasant life in France not long after the French Revolution. "The Gleaners" is the inspiration for the landscapes on the left, drawn using oil pastels and analogous colors. The three trees drive home the concept of space by using diminishing size and perspective, guided by the Rule of Thirds that helps the artist with the placement of elements and the focal point within the composition.

Value Leaf Study - Inspired by Picasso

For Pablo Picasso, my 4th-graders did value studies using leaf-shaped templates to create a patterned composition, then shaded the leaves to imply lines of separation between leaves. Some used a single leaf and divided their backgrounds into shaded sections.

My 3rd-graders enjoyed creating Cubist self-portraits inspired by the many self-portraits of Pablo Picasso. See my "3rd-Grade Projects" post.

Wrapping Paper Self-Portraits - Inspired by Reynolds/Stuart

We also did wrapping paper self-portraits with 5th- and 6th-graders inspired by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Gilbert Stuart (Portrait artist of George Washington). Each year, the school collects leftover gift wrap from the holidays and I do this lesson in January.
In July, I will be teaching seniors how to do something similar using decorative papers.

In an Op Art lesson inspired by Victor Vasarely, 5th-graders learned how to do paper weaving. We used contrasting colors and combinations of wavy and straight lines to achieve this effect.

For 3rd-graders, the project (February lesson) was to cut out a heart shape and trace it onto a 12"X18" piece of watercolor paper in an overlapping pattern then color in each intersection (shape) to form a composition. This is similar to the value study we did for the Picasso lesson, but more about geometric pattern rather than shading.




Tissue paper collage is a fun way to create a background and a good lesson about warm and cool colors. This one was inspired by Vincent Van Gogh. We added black paper cutouts (silhouettes) to create a scene using perspective. Notice the limo and hot air balloon on the road in the desert. The 2nd part was another session inspired by Norman Rockwell's "The Dugout".

Figures Atop  Geometric Background - Inspired by N.C. Wyeth

Sample Concept - Inspired by Johannes Vermeer

We used repetition of shape to create movement in this composition inspired by the illustrations of N. C. Wyeth. His "Blue Lock the Queen" depicts a white horse being chased, so movement is an obvious choice for teaching an art concept. There was a lot of prep for this lesson, since I needed to search magazines for figures, mount them on oaktag, and cut them out for students to trace. We used neon tagboard for the figures and geometric shapes displayed on a black background...
Striking! And not because this example shows Felix Hernandez throwing a strike. Ha!

I struggled to come up with a project inspired by Vermeer. His perspective in "The Lacemaker" is so shallow. I decided to use oaktag-mounted geometric volumes as templates for 5th-graders to arrange still lifes of overlapping shapes. They then shaded each volume and optionally added shadows for their compositions.

All of these lesson plans will eventually be made available on ETSY or Pinterest. Requests may be made by submitting Comments to this or other posts.