Henri Rousseau

Second and Fourth graders have just finished their oil pastel drawings, inspired by the work of Henri Rousseau.  He is an interesting artist because he didn't go to art school.  He taught himself painting while working as a customs officer, and only became well known late in his life.  Rousseau's themes usually include jungles, so that is what students at H.C. Storm made too.  The biggest focus was trying to get a sense of Value in our work.  Not monetary value, but light and dark.  Shadows and Highlights were created with just white and black oil pastel, mixing into the under color of every object drawn.

Design in 5th Grade

There are somethings that are universally understood as good design in our culture.  Today we explored some principles called variety, balance, proportion, and rhythm as it may pertain to non-objective paintings.
Students were directed to use a variety of colors, and shapes, but then also to repeat them all over to create rhythm.   Different sizes were used to add proportion, but then everything had to stay balanced by way of even distribution of these elements.  Here are some results from our first class.  While some finished, others did not. We will work again during our next class either creating new paintings or finishing our old ones.

Josef Albers in 4th

  We finished a eye opening unit in color theory, using the artist Josef Albers as inspiration.  Students experimented with colors, developing a sense of color value (lightness or darkness) and the color temperature (warm and cool)  Some students were so excited by their discoveries, that they did some similar paintings at home!