Lego Self Portraits

I decided to do something a little different this year. Instead of asking students to draw a self portrait of themselves in pencil (that they usually hate because one facial feature is always way out of whack) I told them they were creating a Lego character that embodied who they are inside and out. They had to design this Lego character's clothing, facial expression and background to fit who they viewed themselves as.

There are tons of great examples of this art on Pinterest that I showed my class before we began to provide inspiration and motivation. What I love most about this art, is that it looks so vibrant on the wall and no one feels like they failed at a self portrait. My students are extremely proud of their efforts. The Art is going to be paired with a 30 word poem they wrote about themselves on the first day of school.

I can't wait to get it all up on the wall - Once I track down a ladder for my insanely high ceilings!

Two Point Perspective Art

Last week I took an art rotation with each half of my class during our technology time. We looked at one point perspective art of a basic room. The technical drawing and language that the children used sold me on attempting this type of art again and extending their pieces.

With group one student's looked a two point perspective art of a country house and with group two student's looked at two point perspective art of a city. I am pleased with the outcome of their drafts. They are still in draft phase of these pieces at this stage, they discussed how two point perspective is much harder than one. Some students chose to leave certain features out of their art due to difficulty or no room based on where they placed their finishing points. 

Things the students noticed for their final pieces:

- Rulers are a must!

- Don't press to hard because you need to rub some lines out 

- You use a lot of lines in these pieces as a guide for windows, doors etc..

- Where you put your vanishing points will affect the size and shape of certain features 

- There is a lot of maths in this type of art

- Student's believe these art pieces look best in pencil form (most didn't want to add colour or too much detail because they thought it would take away from or ruin the piece)

Two Point Perspective City

Student Work:

Two Point Perspective Cottage

Student Work:

One Point Perspective Art

One point perspective art was our focus for today's art session. Students have had opportunities to create a range of colourful and expressive pieces of art throughout the year. I wanted student's to attempt something a little more technical and structured.

We began the session by looking at a range of perspective art works and discussing their key features. This prompted a lot of discussion and we talked extensively about distance and relationships between various objects, the vanishing point and perspectives from a range of angles.

Student's found this activity challenging at first. They needed a ruler, rubber, pencil and blank piece of paper. The confusion came from the angled lines that came from the vanishing point. It took student's a while to grasp the concept that all angles come from and go to the vanishing point.

I was impressed with the amount of Mathematics language they were using when discussing their pieces. They spoke about parallel lines, vertical and horizontal lines, angles, shape, distance and scale.

We used the following video as a guide for our first piece. Student's followed the instructions from this video as their first draft and introduction to one point perspective. They will be designing their own rooms using the rules from today's session to show their understanding of one point perspective.
Students will be adding colour to their pieces and their own uniqueness with what the put outside the window, in the paintings and on the walls.

Examples of student work:

This work is unfinished and in draft form

Puarenga Art Rotation

This term I have been taking art as part of our learning rotation. The other teachers in my LC have been teaching Spanish, science and Chinese.

The first piece of art we created was a watercolour piece.

Instead of using watercolour paints we used watercolour pencils. The students were able to take more care with their colour choice and experiment with colours without any fear of 'ruining' their art.

I bought an amazing art resource from Teachers Pay Teachers to help with selecting new and exciting art lessons. Below is one of the lessons from the resource:

Students have decided on their own 'movement' pattern and how they want to represent the black/white aspect of the picture. 

I will add some finished results here in the next few weeks. 

Point Value Art

Ms. Lopez in the Art Room has some amazing resources for implementing art into your classroom.

I found a Point Value art project when exploring her site.

 'This project works well for many grade levels and is a good opportunity to teach kids not only about colour theory and different values, but about thinking outside the box.

The project began with students following some basic directions, such as "draw 4 lines that begin and end at the edge of the paper."
After the lines were drawn and traced with black marker, I got down to the demonstration.  We incorporated different shading techniques with analogous colours to fill each new shape that was created during the first part of the project.
In the end, each student had practiced thinking outside the box, practiced colouring and shading, and had a beautiful finished product.'

Explicit instructions:

Part I Directions (do this with pencil):

1. Draw four lines beginning and ending at the edge of the paper.
2. Draw five circles.
3. Draw four triangles.
4. Draw one diamond.
5. Add one line that looks like waves.
6. Add two lines that look like lightning.
7. Draw three lines that are curvy.
8. Draw six short lines.
9. Draw one long line.
10. Add four more shapes.

*Go over all your pencil lines with thin black marker, then erase your pencil lines.

Part II Directions (do this with markers and colored pencils):

1. Fill in an odd number of shapes with a dark colored marker.
2. Fill at least five shapes with gradation.
3. Fill at least five shapes with pointillism.
4. Fill at least five shapes with cross-hatching.

*No shapes may be left blank.

Rules for Coloring (use the part II directions to make these combinations):

1. Make red turn into orange.
2. Make orange turn into yellow.
3. Make green turn into yellow.
4. Make blue turn into green.
5. Make violet turn into blue.
6. Make violet turn into red.

*These rules may be repeated as necessary to fill the paper.

Here are some of our completed projects:

 

Teaching Our Pepeha

At the start of this year our staff went on a PD day to our local Marae. Once we there we talked about connecting our students to the local area through our school pepeha. It was great for us as staff to learn our pepeha and have it broken down. It was broken down into meaning of the words and understanding of each of the locations and their significance to our school and students. 

Our Pepeha:

Ko Whakapoungakau te pae maunga

Ko Pukepoto te tihi

Ko Waingaehe te awa

Ko te Rotoruanui-a-Kahumata-momoe

Ko Mokoia te Motutapu-a-Tinirau

Ko Puketawhero te papawhenua

Ko Whakaue te iwi

Ko Roro-o-terangi te hapu

Ko Mokoia te kura

Tihei mauriora

One of our teachers taught this to the students' during our camp rotation. She taught it to the students line by line. She started with our maunga and showed the students what it was, where it was and broke down the meaning of the word 'Whakapoungakau'. She then told the students to draw a mountain range on their paper and label it. She did this line by line until the students had a piece of art that reflected our pepeha. What I love most about this is the work my students came back with was all different based upon their interpretation and the way they visualized each feature.