Solar System Art

2nd grade just finished solar system art.  We talked about all of the planets in our solar system.  We chose a few to try to paint and used watercolor paint and oil pastel to make the planets look more realistic.  After we finished painting the planets, we cut them out and glued them on a black piece of paper.  We added rings around a planet and stars.  We only did 4 planets because of time, but I would like to try it again with ALL of the planets on a large sheet of paper!   :)

Surrealism

Recently, 5th grade studied Surrealism.  We looked at artists like Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali.  For their project, they cut images out of magazines and glued them on their paper.  After they glued them down, they made a background with oil pastels.  The goal was to make their images look like they belong in the backgrounds they drew.  I told them to be very creative and to make things that look realistic but are nearly impossible in real life.  There were many that turned out awesome!  Here are a few examples below.

Magazine Color Wheels

Some of my classes were ahead of other classes, so I needed a fun, easy, project that we could complete in a day.  I made an empty color wheel and let the students cut out pictures of different colored items to fill it in. They look neat when they are done and the kids had a good time doing it!  I had some 1st and second graders do this, but it could be used for any grade level.

Owls

1st Grade just made owls.  We drew the owls together.  I had them trace all of their lines with marker.  Next, they colored the owls with different types of brown.  We cut the owls out and then started working on our background.  We talked about different types of lines you can make in art.  The students cut different lines to make strips of paper for their background.  We used a really neat, decorative paper! I think they turned out pretty cool!

William Wegman inspired artwork

3rd Grade recently looked at the artist, William Wegman.  He took pictures of his dogs and put clothes on them and made them do human like things.  We took a picture of a cat (a grumpy cat!) and made them look like they were doing human things, just like Wegman did in his photographs.  I loved the way some of their pictures turned out.  Some are very funny! Here is the cat picture we used and some examples below.