Mall Exhibit

I took a sampling of work from my students of grades 3 - 6 to the local mall for our annual Catholic Schools Exhibit. The display boards contained 2 -D work that has been completed since this fall. I am saving the sculptures and the masks for an exhibit coming up in March that has an attendant.

These 4 display boards contained the Personal Art Series done by 2 fifth grade students and 2 sixth graders. Each year since 1st grade they have made a sample drawing containing the following subjects: people, animal, building, vehicle, and plant. They may arrange it differently each time or the same. They challenge themselves to come up with a slightly different version each year as their skills and talents develop. It is fun to see this series come together as the students reach the upper elementary grades.

The idea came from a colleague of mine. She got these 2 groups started with the pencil drawings back in first and second grades. Because of her encouragement, I decided to add it to my curriculum. The children have grabbed on to the idea very well and they are amazing me with such creativity. I am so glad she didn't keep the idea to herself.

Personal Art Series by MorganM. grade 5



Personal Art Series by Ryan S. grade 5

Personal Art Series by Kellan D. grade 6

Artistic Statement: "It was really fun to make these. I hope I can keep doing them!"

Personal Art Series by Courtney F. grade 6

Artist Statement: "I like drawing in a lot of colors."

Our Eiffel Tower Paintings

I learned from my blogging friend Barb at The French Elements that the Eiffel tower was celebrating their 120 birthday. She had posted a very neat video clip of the light show that was held in the months of October through December.

Here are photos of three paintings by my 3rd grade students! Everyone had such amazing results, I'm sorry I don't have more photos included right now. I will add a link later to take you to our schools artsonia gallery.

Our Animal Molas

The mola applique pieces came out beautifully by the entire class of 4th grade students. We layered the cut outs by building upwards instead of cutting through. They designed the animal on scrap manilla paper that was cut to 9" x 12". That way most of them were large enough to be the main motif, but small enough to have room in the background for the floating repeated shapes. I am very pleased with the results.

Our school enjoyed having them hang in the cafeteria. They are now stored away as we will have a special expo at the shopping mall at the end of January and some will be shown again at the Pump House art gallery when Aquinas Schools has their elementary show.

The stacked colors really look marvelous in all of the student work. I think either the rectangle or the oval worked well for background fills. I prefer the oval, but it is a bit more work to make all these shapes. The students were aware of stacking the paper to cut more than one layer at a time.

I am glad we tried these pieces this year. It really helped enhance our studies of world art and they were enjoyed by many people the day we had our United Nations Celebration. This is a lesson I would definitely repeat.

Animals With a Mondian Grid

Earlier this school year, I introduced the third grade students to Piet Mondrian's grid paintings. We saw some reproductions of his "Broadway Boogie Woogie" and "Victory Boogie Woogie". We made note of how he gridded his canvas and used pure hues of the primary colors, red, yellow, and blue.

The students designed an animal on scrap manilla paper. I told them to draw it so at least 3 parts of the animal touched the edge of the paper. They cut these out to use as a pattern on the white cardstock. They transfered just the outline of the animals contour shape. Inside the animal the students drew straight lines in permanent ink to form a grid. They began forming a pattern of squares and rectangles and colored each space separately. Many found out that it was easier to color a few squares while they had the marker uncapped. Then open the next color and color some more. In the end they needed to be more careful, because we tried to not color the same color in an adjacent square. Black and white were part of the design too! We framed these up on black backgrounds with cut squares and rectangles of the primary colors.

The original idea came from an article in the arts and activities magazine. I believe I saw the article posted on the website. Here is a link that will take you to the article called "Animals With a Mondrian Twist".

It was a successful lesson and the children were happy with the results. I was pleased to hang them with some beautiful flag art for the Veteran's Day program we had at school on November 11th.

If you'd like to see the entire class's work follow this link to our school's artsonia webpage.

Replica of "The Scream"

Our students recently helped complete a mural version of Edvard Munch's famous Scream painting. We used the Portfolio brand oil crayons as suggested in the directions and we couldn't be more pleased with the final outcome. It was a wonderful addition to our Harvest Concert and it now has a special space in the gallery/hallway between the art and music classroom.


If you are interested, Kathy Barbro of Art Projects for Kids blog has many other fine murals download and print for just a small fee. I printed on heavy cardstock and glued our mural with tacky PVC glue. We painted the border with a metalic gold acrylic, for the museum framed look.



I don't know for sure which mural we'll do next, but I am sure we will do another one or two before end of the school year! Perhaps we will try her new Christmas Nativity and then do the Seurat's Sunday afternoon one this spring.

Shell Designs

"Super Shells" by Cody grade 5

Students composed the shells and arranged background patterns to highlight the shell shapes.

"Underwater Symphony"

by Rachel grade 5

In 5th grade we took a slightly different approach to the shell assignment. The students did the same observational drawingas the 6ht graders; however, I had them go over the lines in black sharpie ink. This was the first year for having complete sets of watercolor pencils, so I instructed them to draw with them dry and then using a damp brush we liquified the pigment and the colors blended beautifully.

To view the entire class set of shell designs by the 5th grade, please visit Artsonia.

Shell Paintings

To see more from this body of work by 6th grade students, please click on the artsonia link to check out the other great work done by the entire grade level.

Students in grade 6 spent some time making observational drawings of shells before creating the final work in mixed media. They chose a shell to take back to their work area and make realistic interpretations of the shell. It helped to draw the contour first and then look to see if the shell had a texture or a special pattern or color design. After the several shells were composed, we covered the shell shape with a heavy application of wax crayon. Sixth grade students took a more painterly approach when they washed in warm blends of brown watercolor for sand and cool blue mixtures for the ocean.

After the paint had dried, some students went back in an drew sand and water textures using colored pencil. Others added water bubbles or spray from the ocean using a white oil crayon.

It was an enjoyable project and the art pieces have been on display in the hallway between the music and art room.