Organic Shape Paintings

Third grade artists are working on a big collaborative project.  We have been inspired by the work of Elizabeth Murray.  We noticed how large, organic shapes make up her work.  Some of us were reminded of graffiti art, while others saw things from everyday life.  We made our own organic shapes and learned about making tints.  A tint is made when you add white to a color.  The next step is adding in lines and patterns to create a visual rhythm. We learned about how to use the color wheel to choose colors that will POP!  Here is some work in progress. Check back soon to see how all of the parts come together!

4/5 Logo and Silkscreening!

4Fives created an awesome class logo and on Friday, we printed it on shirts. The students learned about silk screening and how this can be used to make many images. The fifth graders had done this last year, so they helped out with the entire process. Each student printed at least one shirt and a piece of cloth for a later project. Here is what they wrote on their blog:

The 4Fives Party Down at the Season 2 Silk Screening Celebration!

November 9, 2009

Good morning everyone! We did an amazing project on Friday, and so many of the 4Fives wanted to write about it! So we decided that it was okay to do that, and you can read each of our posts about our experience!

Get READY! HERE WE GO!!!

Friday was a really fun day for us because we did silk screening! It was a really fun thing to do. First, we went to the art room, and Ms. Kimball said to go sit on the rug. Then, she showed us a video about silk screening.

It was really cool to see that video. Next, Ms Kimball showed us how to put our t-shirts over cardboard to prepare them for the screening.

Then she said to go to a table. She put paint on the screen, and we used a squeegee to move the paint over the screen and onto our shirts!

Then Bee asked me to take video of the silk screening with the Flip, so I did. Next I videotaped Ms. Kimball do the silk screening on our t-shirt. When it was done, it looked amazing! It had the 4Fives logo on it! We all did the silk screening on our white t-shirts. It looked more amazing on the white t-shirt.

At the end, I used the Flip to videotape me and Bee. Check back this week to see what I taped!

Love,

Adrian

—–

Hello! I am going to talk about last Friday. We were silk screening our t-shirts in the art room. Our art teacher helped us with the t-shirts, and our logo was on the t-shirts and every body was happy. We went to the line and the art teacher showed us how to do the silk screening on our t-shirts, then we got too happy!

We were with SFJ2 and he brought his t-shirts and he got a gray t-shirt and the old people were last on the line to silk screen and the little kids were in the front of the line to silk screen.

Our logo was on the t-shirt, and our art teacher and regular teacher made one too.

We was getting this material that Bee was not using, some recycled old fabric that she had at home, and she tore it into squares for us to silk screen on. So we made a logo on that square shape thing and it looked good on it, but we ran out of it, so some of the kids were drawing and that was me, John and SFJ2.

By

Emanuel

—–

Hello everyone! I am going to tell you about what happened on Friday. On Friday, we were silk screening on our white plain shirts.

We put green paint on a screen that Ms.Kimball had put our logo on.

When we were done silk screening our shirts we all got a peace of fabric and silk screened it too.
We also drew on a piece of paper. Then me and SFJ2 were playing around.

This was the first time I silk screened, it was the best day ever!!! Adrian was filming for us and we all had a wonderful day. After silk screening, our hands were all green we all got a wipey to clean our hands and then we all went home.

Love,
Jonathan

—–

On Friday, we brought in t-shirts to do silk screening. Ms. Kimball showed us a video of how a person made a slider to put the print on our shirts. We start to practice putting our logo on a sheet of paper. Then everybody got a cardboard and we put our shirts inside it.

Then we began to do our shirts while Bee was ripping pieces of fabric to do our logo on after we finished putting our logo on the t-shirts. Ms. Kimball said when everyone is done making their logo on their t-shirts we can get another shirt and do our logo on it. SFJ2 came and did a t-shirt. Jackson didn’t come but we made him a t-shirt. Then we did our logo on the fabric that Bee brought in and when we finished we set it on the rug.

So everyone wake up because if we show you guys how to silk screen you’ll probably want to do it also!!!!!!!!!!!

So if you want to do it you can ask the 4Fives because we can help you.

From your friend,

Malaysia

—–

Last Friday, the 4Fives did silk screening once again. First, we saw a video about silk screening and how the ink gets transferred on things. Then we went to the table with Ms. Kimball. Then we did a practice silk screen on paper together as a group. Then we all had to line up and wait to silk screen our t-shirts. While we were doing that, Bee was tearing up some pieces of fabric for us to silkscreen on. Then the principal came up to see us silk screening.

We all had to stop for a minute and pay attention to the art teacher. Ms. Kimball put tape on the table just like a square and she told us to put the fabric piece in the little box. Then Nicholas was in charge of holding the sides of the silk screening board. The 4Fives then got a chance to do it on their own. Then Adrian was in charge of ironing the t-shirts after they dried, so the paint would set and not wash out.

Here are the steps for silk screening if you want to do it too.

Step1. Lay your T-shirt under the board.

Step 2. Hold the squeezer with both hands together.

Step 3. Slide it down gently.

Step 4. Take your shirt under from the board.

Step 5. Take your t-shirt and put it some place where it can dry.

Step 6. Then iron your T-Shirt.

Have a great day,

Love,

Maya

—–

Good morning every body! I am going to tell you about what we did on Friday. So what we did on Friday, was that we did silk screening and it was so amazing because we got to bring shirts in. And the reason why we needed to bring shirts in, is because we needed to put our logo on our shirts.

And now I am going to tell you the details of how to silk screen.

First you have to put paint on the screen on the table.

Then, you get this smooth kind of squeegee brush and spread out the paint.

And then you get your shirt, and then get in line.

And then you put your shirt underneath the screen.

And then you need to put your shirt neatly down, and then nice and hard pull the smooth brush across the screen.

And then when you take it from underneath the screen, it will have the 4Fives logo on your shirt!

And after that we got to do our logo on this kind of fabric that Bee tore up and then Bee said that we can put the logo on it for another project that we will do later.

And I forgot to tell you who came in our room………it was……………

JACKIE (SFJ2)!!!!!!!! and it got really fun because when every body was done we all got to color. It was a great day.

Love,

Taliya

—–

On Friday, at the end of the day, we went to art, and we were going to do silk screening. We had our shirts to get started, but Ms. Kimball showed us a video of how you do silk screening first. The video showed you how you put the paint on the screen and you move it back and forth so it could spread out over your design.

After we saw the video, we went to the table and we took our t-shirts out and put them on a square cardboard. Next, we took a jar of paint and put it on the silk screen. Then we took our t-shirts and lined up for our silk screening.

When it was my turn I first took my shirt with the cardboard and put it under the silk screen frame. I put the silk screen on the shirt and pulled the squeegee down and I when I picked up the frame, our logo was on the shirt!

Love,

Travis

—–

We hope that you enjoyed our posts!!! We will be putting up videos from our day this week, so keep checking back!

Love,

The 4Fives

THE BEST CLASS IN THE WHOLE WORLD.

Thank you 4Fives! I had so much fun!

MK

4th Grade Exquisite Corpses

To introduce fourth graders to the way Surrealists worked, we played the exquisite corpse game. I love doing this with students for 3 main reasons:
1. They LOVE it and are totally engaged the entire time.
2. They collaborate with their peers.
3. The level of concentration is so high that you can hear a pin drop in the studio. (REMARKABLE!)

Here is a sneak peak of a few. I need to take some better photographs and will post more on how this develops soon.

Visit to Chris Astley's Studio

Last week, five amazing 4/5 artists, Bee Ladd and I went to visit the studio of artist Chris Astley. It was AMAZING! We created plaster casts of our fingers which will be a jumping off point for a much larger project that will have us collaborating with artists throughout the year. It was such a blast. I believe some students will be posting about it soon, so check out the 4/5's blog. Here are some photos of our trip:

David Hockney Painting Exhibit

I haven't seen it yet, but there is an exhibit of David Hockney's paintings done between 2006 and 2009 currently on view. From what I have read, the show at both PaceWildenstein gallery locations contains a number of new landscape paintings. I cannot wait to check it out. Please let me know if you see it! I will post a reaction soon!

David Hockney: Paintings 2006-2009
PACEWILDENSTEIN
32 East 57th Street
and
534 West 25th Street
Until December 24

Playing with COMPOSITION

First graders are learning about composition. We learned that composition means the placement or arrangement of things in a piece of art. I set up 6 composition stations and students spent the class creating a variety of compositions with different materials. We didn't save any compositions so here are the images of our work!







Some artists began to COLLABORATE:



And some compositions came off the table:

Next, we will create compositions for collograph printing.

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:

Project Round-Up: Second Grade Moving Animals

Second graders recently completed a painting unit. We looked at the work of Keith Haring and noticed how he made his figures appear to be moving. We observed that he did this by the position of their bodies and by adding movement lines. One student noticed that these lines showed "the sound of the air moving." We then created our own piece of work showing an animal moving. We began by creating an outline. Next, we use the three primary colors and three neutrals to add color to our paintings. We mixed the acrylic paint on our paper using large and small brushes, depending on if we were painting a large area or small details. The work came out amazing! We are going to exhibit it in the main lobby during the month of November. Here are some sneak peaks:

Project Round-Up: Third Grade Ugly Dolls

There is an ugly doll craze in third grade! We decided to use it to learn about symmetry and asymmetry.

Third graders created paper "ugly creatures" whose bodies and features were symmetrical or asymmetrical. They learned how to create a symmetrical shape by folding a piece of paper before cutting and that this created an instant line of symmetry to work from.

Once their collaged creatures were finished, they created the place where their creature lives. We had a lot of fun making these and the results are very funny. Check them out on display in the third grade hallway.

Couldn't Resist

Being home sick today, I had some time to look at things on the internet. This has little to do with what is happening in our studio right now, but I can't resist posting it here so I don't lose it. Isn't it great inspiration for a dream room? Start drawing yours!

photo via Bird and Banner Blog via NYTimes