Japanese Inspired Art

The 3rd and 4th grade students have been learning about Japan and Japanese art.   The picture below is inspired by the cherry blossom trees of Japan.  The students used an eye dropper to add black ink to their paper.  Then they used a straw, blew through the straw, and ta da!...The result is some pretty cool looking trees.  We added tissue paper for the flowers.

 One of the Japanese artists we looked at was Hokusai, who is known for his woodblock prints of Japanese landscapes and people.  He is most famous for his painting The Great Wave off  Kanagawa, which is shown below: 

Photo Courtesy of http://www.andreas.com/

After looking at Hokusai's prints, students created their own landscape or nature related scene and made a print using stryofoam.  The kids loved being able to make multiple copies of their design using brayers and ink.