Painting Like Pollock

The Kindergartners created some "action paintings" inspired by Jackson Pollock and his drippy/splattered paintings.  The kids LOVED the having the freedom to splat the paint onto their papers using eye droppers.  Many declared it was the best day of art class ever.  For one of the paintings, the students made swirling glue lines on their paper and then sprinkled salt on top.  After it dried, they painted the salt using primary colored watercolors and watched the colors bleed together to create the secondary colors.

Laurel Burch Cats

The 1st and 2nd graders have been continuing to create art related to animals.  These past 2 weeks they've been learning about Laurel Burch, an artist who created paintings of cats.  Burch's cats are abstract because they are bright, colorful, and full of patterns.  Burch's cat paintings have become well known because they've been printed on bags, pins, scarves, mugs, and many other objects.

Laurel Burch in front of one of her paintings

Photo courtesy of  http://www.patriciaebauer.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/20070924_laurel-burch.gif

 Here are some of 1st and 2nd graders' own versions of cats in Laurel Burch's style:

A Japanese Visitor

Last week students were able to learn about Japanese culture through a visitor named Rumi.  Rumi is from Japan but is currently living in the U.S. through a program where she does presentation on Japan for schools and community groups.  Rumi taught students about her way of life in Japan, which tied in well with our Japanese Art unit.  One interesting thing we learned is that all students in Japan remove their shoes upon arriving to school.  They then put on a different type of slipper to wear at school. 

Miss Back and Rumi

Eric and Mrs. Nomanson practice bowing, which is a form of greeting one another in Japan

Students practice bowing

Rumi demonstrates how to use chopsticks

The students practice using chopsticks

Rumi demonstrates how to put on a kimono.  A kimono is a type of robe.  In Japan, people now wear kimonos for special occasions only.

Hats and Instruments

The Kindergartners have been making artwork that is related to something you might see at or use for a celebration.  Today they finished up their crazy hats, which were inspired by pictures we saw of hats from the Royal Wedding.  They also created instruments a few weeks ago.  They had fun parading down the hall in their hats while playing their instruments.  Check out their awesome creations below:

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.