Project Round-Up: Fifth Grade Mints

Fifth grade artists have been working on getting to know their subject. We have been practicing observational drawing and practicing to see our subject. We have then taken the same subjects and created paintings. For this project, our subject was a little mint.

Students first created three pencil drawings:
Blind Contour- looking only at the mint, not at the paper
Opposite Hand- using their non-dominant hand to draw
Contour- a line drawing with some shading

Once we had gotten to know our subject, we began to create a painting. We started by thinking about how we wanted our composition to look. We explored the work of Wayne Thiebaud and noticed how he creates simple compositions for his still life paintings. We used a neutral brown to create an underpainting. With the underpainting, we focused on value and composition. Next, we added acrylic paint. We used the three primary colors to create all of the shades that we worked over our underpainting. Some artists stuck with the realistic style and others began to add more colors and imaginitive touches. Here are some photos of each step: