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!

Eric Carle Style Collage

1st and 2nd graders have been enjoying the freedom of this medium.  The simplicity of the paper cut-outs offer a care free art form without being overly technical and potentially intimidating.  The biggest focus on this project was to create something original.  It is easy to glob onto others ideas and copy, so I stressed the need to be secretive with their intellectual property.

Step 1: Create a grid of 4 crayon texture drawings.

Step 2: Paint grid by mixing two colors together with a thin wash.

Step 3:  Cut out and glue to make a unique subject.

Here are some examples from our students...

After School Enrichment

If anyone is in my Claymation class, and need the web address for our videos here it is. http://www.youtube.com/user/MrCasbarian?feature=mhee

5th Grade Shadow Puppet Shows Online

We have begun performing the long awaited Character Counts shadow puppet shows in 5th Grade.  Thank you Mrs. Smith's Class for doing such a wonderful job yesterday.  I've posted your puppet shows on youtube. Today 5J will be performing and these can be seen on the HC Storm Art youtube channel later today here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/MrCasbarian?feature=mhee

Make sure that students view this with parental permission as always.

Color Studies 2-3 Grade

We are just finishing up some Wassily Kandinsky inspired color studies this week.  This was a great review of the color wheel, warm (red,yellow, orange) and cool (blue, green, violet) colors, and some practice in third grade with complementary colors (opposites).  These are tempra paint on paper.