It is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly, that one fine day you discover, to your surprise, that you have rendered something in its true character.
– Camille Pissarro
Middle School Electives:
A common theme in art electives recently is the use of a variety of values to create more successful drawings and paintings.
Drawing students used a gradation of values to create light and shadow in their tree frog drawings.
Paintings students painted trees with Atmospheric perspective. By lightening the values, Students were are to mimic how distant objects appear to the eye.
Art builds lifelong skills: Art helps us develop better fine motor skills and focus. It is a safe place to explore and take risks.
Art helps grow imagination and creativity. Art feeds our creative minds and helps us to explore new possibilities. We can imagine all kinds of things. We can make something out of nothing.
Art is a great way to explore feelings. As nonverbal communication, we can express feelings that are hard to put into words. Art can help us understand ourselves and others better.
Art helps build confidence. Exploring and experimenting, trying different materials and taking chances can help build our confidence. We get to take safe risks, get messy and make mistakes.
Art provides a way to experience and appreciate our world. Art is a universal language that helps connects us as people and as members of a global community. It has the ability to expose us to new perspectives and ideas and to challenge us to think about what it means to be a person living in this world.
Art is all around us! We can make it, talk about it, see it all around us, see it in books and museums. It’s everywhere!
Elements of Art
My love of art has been a life long experience that I am excited to share with others. Along with teaching, I am an artist and musician.
I first joined Merryhill in March 2008 at the Davis campus where I taught both art and music. I received my K-12 teaching credential in art from CSU Sacramento, CA. I have a BA in art and minor in psychology from UC Davis, CA where I studied with Robert Arneson, Manual Neri, Wayne Thiebaud and others in the art department. I am a working artist and musician as well as an art educator.
My goals as a teacher include helping young people find creativity, self-expression and an appreciation of art. I want students to experience art positively and develop confidence in his or her ability to create and imagine. As part of my program, I am using the educational series “Explorations in Art” and “Adventures in Art”. Both are wonderful resources to help reinforce concepts and activities.
I am proud of the work our students do and look forward to all they create. It is an honor to share my passion for art with our young people here at Merryhill Midtown.
Courtesy of Watercolor and Art Exploration students, donut designs, popsicle paintings and clay food creations will soon be featured in the hallway art cabinets for the “Food for Thought” art exhibition. Much like Wayne Thiebaud’s dessert paintings, these beautiful creations are inspired by color, texture, shape, visual rhythm and shared stories.
Some past projects:
4th grade drew surrealistic eyes inspired by René Magritte.
3rd grade created positive and negative shape collages.
Pastel landscapes by 2nd grade.
Our art students are becoming more mindful of concepts and techniques for drawing and they are developing quite a tool box of skills they can use. With these growing abilities, the new year is a perfect time to focus on the challenges of realistic drawing. Realistic drawing helps with precision, visual analysis, creative problem solving, and concentration.
With nature as our theme, students are learning some facts on animals as they are attempting to create more realistic representations. Using photos as reference, we are exploring a variety of techniques as we discuss proportion, shading, texture and color. Students recently warmed up by drawing a toucan with its exaggerated proportions and striking appearance.
Art inspires higher level thinking, focus, a growth mindset, visual literacy, curiosity, respect, and connection. The elements and principles of design are an artist’s toolbox. Knowing the tools not only improves students’ studio art skills and gives them deeper appreciation when viewing artworks, it helps make them better, more informed citizens and prepares them for a visually complex and culturally interconnected modern world in need of creative problem solvers.
– Cindy Ingram, creator of Art Class Curator and The Curated Connections Library
Thanks for inspiring us Wayne Thiebaud!
One of our favorite artists Wayne Thiebaud is turning 100 years old on November 15, 1920! Our young art students have been working on drawings inspired by Thiebaud’s work. We are focusing our attention on composition, color, rhythm and subject matter. Students can visit the Crocker Art museum in Sacramento to see a special show honoring this world class master. https://www.crockerart.org/exhibitions/wayne-thiebaud-100
Peak into watercolor painting elective:
Painting light, shadow and values takes control of the paint and plenty of patience. Students in watercolor painting elective are taking on the many challenges of working with the translucent qualities of watercolor paint. From expressive brushstrokes to gentle gradations of light to dark, seeing the final product of these explorations is quite an enjoyable experience.
These landscape examples demonstrate the subtle gradations from light to dark that are so effective. It takes a lot of control to achieve this smooth transition of values.
Sept 2020 notes:
It is inspiring to hear young people discussing art with such enthusiasm and mindfulness; our art students are confident and willing to share their thoughts on color theory, balance, symmetry, texture and value. Students share keen and in-depth insights when discussing artworks by Matisse and others putting their critical thinking skills into practice.
Art weaves its way through our daily life and allows many opportunities to overlap cross-curricular themes, helping to spark curiosity and layers of understanding. Recently our younger students looked at the giant panda, considering some facts and developed a drawing with bamboo. Students focused on symmetrical balance as they drew their panda character and even created their own environment to suit their creative minds!
Upper grade students folded an origami house incorporating texture, value and color and balance. Inside the open door , students add a visual narrative that represents the story behind their design.
A three-flower still-life theme gave 5th grade an opportunity to explore center of interest and asymmetrical balance. Defining an art concept as abstract as composition is a challenge. After a lively discussion of works by Henri Matisse, students visualized four quadrants and began a flower still life composition with the asymmetry in mind. Adding color, value and patterns produced some stunning results!
Just for fun: Some activities from past art classes:
Calligraphy dragon exercise
Still-life composition thumbnail sketches
Realistic nose practice
Realistic eye practice
Cross-stitch practice
Recently, fourth grade created flower pastels inspires by Vincent van Gogh’s “Three Sunflowers” painting. They consider art concepts such as composition, value, texture and color as they work.
First grade represented the wind with curvy white lines to show motion and a colorful kite collage. Windy days and Frances de Goya’s painting “The Kite” served as motivation.
Kindergarten was inspired to draw colorful cupcakes after viewing and discussing Wayne Thiebaud’s cupcake paintings.
As students explore materials and practice skills in art, we focus in on different art elements and design principles. These concepts are the words for art’s language. Recently, students have been thinking about color theory as well as symmetrical balance.
We have an intuitive sense about when things feel right in art. Often the students will ask peers to help by asking the question “Is it finished or does it need something?” Students use their skills to try and find out how to make their art look finished. Maybe a drawing needs some shading or texture. Maybe one side feels too empty. Color theory and principles of design are helping students create pictures that look balanced and complete.
First and second grade recently mixed primary colors into secondary colors made a creative color wheel. They also worked on bi-symmetrical balance and created fancy insects and space aliens.
Fourth and 5th grade are using principles of design as they work on radial balance and graphic design. They chose a color family to finish their radial symmetry drawing. They are now looking at creative lettering as they plan a poster.
3rd grade is blending art and science as they create realistic drawings of ducks and waterfowl. Students reviewed some duck facts to help them with correct details before they started their drawings. Even in scientific drawings, there are plenty of artistic decisions to be made such as point of view and how much shading and texture to add.
Middle school art notes:
2-D middle school elective is working on printing using styrofoam sheets. Students started by looking at examples and then planned 4 designs. Students transferred their best design to the foam board and drew the lines over with a ball point pen to created crevasses. They rolled ink and pressed paper on top to created a printed series for display.
Other activities in middles school art electives include fantastic world drawings in Fantasy art.
Bouquets and weaving baskets are being created in Making Presents class.
Video class recently created videos on how to make origami. Currently they are practicing drawing realistic eyes.
3rd grade drew realistic robins on a branch using color pencils and a step by step drawing technique that helps with seeing the details.
2nd grade “Pine Trees in the Snow” show value, perspective and cool colors. These mixed media art works use pastel and tempera paint.
Middle school sculpture elective finished clay creations!
First grade did mixed media blue jays in the snow. They used collage for the trees and bird shape, pastel for the blue jay details and tempera paint for the snow.
Elementary art notes:
Some of the activities going on in the art room include looking art concepts, exploring materials, personalizing art themes and looking at famous artist examples. Recent artist focus has included Vincent van Gogh, Paul Klee and Alexander Calder.
Art class often begins with looking at art example and discussing concepts before beginning to create. Students get to put their art vocabulary to use as they discuss elements of art such as value and texture. They develop a keener eye as they share personal observations.
Some students recently created monochromatic blue sky paintings with tempera paint. The next week they added simple collage elements. They will finish up this three week project with texture and lines in pastel. This Mixed media project demonstrates values of blue and thoughtful designs inspired by Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night painting.
5th grade recently worked in pastel and made beautiful animal drawings. They considered symmetry as they created a simplified and bold design of an animal. Then they created a colorful design using blending techniques as they worked with the vibrant oil pastels
As a 3-D session project, some art classes made an imaginary place to play using paper forms and strong construction techniques. Alexander Calder’s sculpture “Shiva” helped inspire.
Paul Klee’s geometric Castle and Sun painting inspired much discussion as well as many colorful castle drawings.
October Middle School notes:
Spotlight on art electives with Ms. Martucci:
Painting students have been working on a planned out non-representation painting. Their abstract themes are inspired by artists like Paul Klee. Beginning with 4 or more small sketches to work on composition ideas., they then picked their best design to draw in color pencil. Their final step will be to create a painting from their planned out design. The final finished project will display each stage of this process.
Fantasy Drawing elective is focusing on facial proportions. A pre-instructional drawing from student imaginations will be compared with drawing done after focused practice. Working on realistic facial proportions, students practiced basic rules then drew portraits from life. As their final piece, students took 1/2 of a magazine face and drew 1/2 as a fantasy character. Knowing the correct facial proportions is a good way to make more believable drawings as these artists change and exaggerate features to create fantasy characters.
Sculpture class recently worked in clay to create dragons and other challenging and fun sculptures. These projects are currently drying before they can be bisque fired in a kiln. Their final step is to glaze and then the ceramic sculptures are fired a second time to make them vitrified and permanent.
Take a peek at some past projects:
First Cherry Blossom Branches:
On display in the art room is a colorful show of cherry blossom branch ink paintings by first grade. Often, students are asked to add more details to their drawings and to fill the page with designs. In this lesson, students worked on simple beauty. They painted a calligraphic line using a paint brush and black ink. Students painted an elegant branch and glued on pink tissue paper blossoms. The finished paintings have a black frame and red yarn to create the look of a hanging scroll.
A peak in the Middle Art Electives:
Art Costa writes about the Habits of Mind of successful people. Some Habits of Mind we often use in art include “Thinking Flexibly” and “Creating, Imagining and Innovating.” The projects we work on in art have themes that allow for many answers, leaving plenty of room for creative solutions. Students are showing a willingness to take chances and try new things as they develop their projects.
Middle school classes this trimester include Drawing Skills, Painting Skills, Useful Crafts and Marionette Musical.
Useful Crafts class is up-cycling old CDs by removing the labels, creating radial designs with sharpies, puffy paint and translucent color paint. The finished projects have a beautiful stained glass effect and make unique sun catcher for windows.
Drawing class is finding that a plain #2 pencil in the right hands can create endless tone variations, soft shadows, and realistic drawings. They are working with 1 point perspective as they attempt to create believable environments.
Painting students are inventing their own ways to demonstrate color theory by planning out new creative color “wheel “ designs.
Marionette Musical class combines art and music. Students are choosing a song and will develop marionette characters from their own designs to create a musical skit.
A peak in Elementary art:
Kindergarten recently worked on 3-D forms. They colored strips of paper, then curled them to made loops. They learned how to glue the strips into chains.
1st and 2nd grade designed woven paper mats. Second grade 2 had the added challenge of overlapping color strips to create a beautiful design. 3rd grade has been working on drawing skills. They focused on shapes as they drew Pokémon style characters. They used their character drawing and story telling skills to created a comic book. 4th and 5th grade are working on demonstrating the concept of color and mood. They looked at the Fauvist artist Andre Derain as inspiration for their paintings.
What’s happening in art class?
Recently:
Lower grades grades designed parks as they demonstrated “form” as an art concept. They folded, twisted curled and glued to create a tiny 3-D model. Students tested for strength by turning their sculptures upside down.
Cross curricular activities included 2nd grade landform paintings that not only complement their classroom studies but also demonstrate color theory. 4th and 5 th grade created art to wear by weaving bracelets on a loom which ties in with their Native American studies.
Middle school crafts elective is excited to start their tie-die project. Art exploration just finished painting very cool pinch pots. artist portraits class wrote about and created a work inspired by a favorite artist of their choice
Lower grades have been exploring elements of art and principles of design. These are concepts we can use to create, enjoy, and understand art. Like understanding parts of writing, these concepts are tools that help us see different layers in art.
Lower grades explored the concepts of different kinds of linesand how they make texturesand designs. Then Kinder & 1st practiced their skills by drawing the theme “A Beautiful Day” while 2nd grade got more specific with “A Tree in Nature”
Artists use different materials. Lower grades explored this with rocks as they illustrated the concepts of texture, variety, arrangement
Rock Arrangement
and balance. They had fun creating rock arrangements in lines, stacks and mini environments.
Upper grades are working on a three week Zentangle Name design. Planning in pencil began creating and refining their letters. Next, they added sharpie outlines to make their letters bold. As they move forward, students judge the progress of their work and make decisions about areas that need strengthening. Their art tool box concepts includes line, color, texture, balance, unityandvariety.
Middle school classes:
USEFUL CRAFTS is creating a woven belt using a straw loom. ARTIST PORTRAITS is drawing famous artist like Van Gogh, Frida Kahlo and Pablo Picasso. EXPLORATIONS IN ART is designing one point perspective name designs. GARBAGE BAND chose songs and started designs for their recycled art instruments.
Spotlight on Art: Demonstrating Knowledge Innovatively.
One of our school wide learning outcomes is to demonstrate knowledge innovatively – art is a great place to put this into use! As we work on art concepts, there are many opportunities to combine lessons with other classroom assignments.
Some highlights from 2016-17
Second grade used art to demonstrate their understanding of land forms in a fun and engaging way. This cross-curriculum activity afforded students an opportunity to use their studies of land forms to help their art and for their art to help demonstrate their understanding of land forms in a visual way. Students analyzed art by artist Wayne Thiebaud and described his use of color and value in beautiful landscapes that are both true to life and artistically painted.
Third grade’s trip to the insect museum created another great opportunity. Students thought about the symmetry and the shapes of insects to create artistic beetle drawings. To create these works, students needed to understand the parts of a beetle or the drawings would not look authentic. As inspiration, we looked at “The Stag Beetle” by Albrecht Durer. We also used our class computer to see collections of beautiful beetles. Beetles come in many colors and shapes so we had plenty of choices from dung beetles to lady bugs and more.
5th grade combined art with their writing assignment. Working with descriptions they wrote on their ipads, they drew suspect sketches. Students thought about facial proportions and expression as they worked. The drawings made great illustrations for the student’s stories.
Middle School “Creative Eye” display in the art room received a great response from viewers. A color wheel is a technical tool artists can use to help with mixing paint and using color families. Middle school practiced mixing colors and instead of a simple diagram, students made creative color wheels with an eye as the theme. The meaning gets deeper still when you think about how it is the eye that sees the colors.
These paintings and drawings created by our young artists show a wide variety of innovative ways to share and demonstrate our understanding.
Ms. Rene Martucci - Art
– Camille Pissarro
Check out these art galleries:
The Crocker art museum
The Blue Line Gallery
The Pence Gallery
Happy art making! See you soon!
– Ms. MARTucci
In what ways do you stay creative?
What can art do for you?
Art builds lifelong skills: Art helps us develop better fine motor skills and focus. It is a safe place to explore and take risks.
Art helps grow imagination and creativity. Art feeds our creative minds and helps us to explore new possibilities. We can imagine all kinds of things. We can make something out of nothing.
Art is a great way to explore feelings. As nonverbal communication, we can express feelings that are hard to put into words. Art can help us understand ourselves and others better.
Art helps build confidence. Exploring and experimenting, trying different materials and taking chances can help build our confidence. We get to take safe risks, get messy and make mistakes.
Art provides a way to experience and appreciate our world. Art is a universal language that helps connects us as people and as members of a global community. It has the ability to expose us to new perspectives and ideas and to challenge us to think about what it means to be a person living in this world.
Art is all around us! We can make it, talk about it, see it all around us, see it in books and museums. It’s everywhere!
Elements of Art
My love of art has been a life long experience that I am excited to share with others. Along with teaching, I am an artist and musician.
I first joined Merryhill in March 2008 at the Davis campus where I taught both art and music. I received my K-12 teaching credential in art from CSU Sacramento, CA. I have a BA in art and minor in psychology from UC Davis, CA where I studied with Robert Arneson, Manual Neri, Wayne Thiebaud and others in the art department. I am a working artist and musician as well as an art educator.
My goals as a teacher include helping young people find creativity, self-expression and an appreciation of art. I want students to experience art positively and develop confidence in his or her ability to create and imagine. As part of my program, I am using the educational series “Explorations in Art” and “Adventures in Art”. Both are wonderful resources to help reinforce concepts and activities.
I am proud of the work our students do and look forward to all they create. It is an honor to share my passion for art with our young people here at Merryhill Midtown.
Ms. MARTucci
Updated Tuesday 10-1-2024 04:47pm
Classroom Notes
Some past projects:
4th grade drew surrealistic eyes inspired by René Magritte.
3rd grade created positive and negative shape collages.
Pastel landscapes by 2nd grade.
Our art students are becoming more mindful of concepts and techniques for drawing and they are developing quite a tool box of skills they can use. With these growing abilities, the new year is a perfect time to focus on the challenges of realistic drawing. Realistic drawing helps with precision, visual analysis, creative problem solving, and concentration.
With nature as our theme, students are learning some facts on animals as they are attempting to create more realistic representations. Using photos as reference, we are exploring a variety of techniques as we discuss proportion, shading, texture and color. Students recently warmed up by drawing a toucan with its exaggerated proportions and striking appearance.
Thanks for inspiring us Wayne Thiebaud!
One of our favorite artists Wayne Thiebaud is turning 100 years old on November 15, 1920! Our young art students have been working on drawings inspired by Thiebaud’s work. We are focusing our attention on composition, color, rhythm and subject matter. Students can visit the Crocker Art museum in Sacramento to see a special show honoring this world class master. https://www.crockerart.org/exhibitions/wayne-thiebaud-100
Peak into watercolor painting elective:
Painting light, shadow and values takes control of the paint and plenty of patience. Students in watercolor painting elective are taking on the many challenges of working with the translucent qualities of watercolor paint. From expressive brushstrokes to gentle gradations of light to dark, seeing the final product of these explorations is quite an enjoyable experience.
These landscape examples demonstrate the subtle gradations from light to dark that are so effective. It takes a lot of control to achieve this smooth transition of values.
Sept 2020 notes:
It is inspiring to hear young people discussing art with such enthusiasm and mindfulness; our art students are confident and willing to share their thoughts on color theory, balance, symmetry, texture and value. Students share keen and in-depth insights when discussing artworks by Matisse and others putting their critical thinking skills into practice.
Art weaves its way through our daily life and allows many opportunities to overlap cross-curricular themes, helping to spark curiosity and layers of understanding. Recently our younger students looked at the giant panda, considering some facts and developed a drawing with bamboo. Students focused on symmetrical balance as they drew their panda character and even created their own environment to suit their creative minds!
Upper grade students folded an origami house incorporating texture, value and color and balance. Inside the open door , students add a visual narrative that represents the story behind their design.
A three-flower still-life theme gave 5th grade an opportunity to explore center of interest and asymmetrical balance. Defining an art concept as abstract as composition is a challenge. After a lively discussion of works by Henri Matisse, students visualized four quadrants and began a flower still life composition with the asymmetry in mind. Adding color, value and patterns produced some stunning results!
Just for fun: Some activities from past art classes:
Realistic nose practice
Realistic eye practice
Cross-stitch practice
Recently, fourth grade created flower pastels inspires by Vincent van Gogh’s “Three Sunflowers” painting. They consider art concepts such as composition, value, texture and color as they work.
Middle school art notes:
2-D middle school elective is working on printing using styrofoam sheets. Students started by looking at examples and then planned 4 designs. Students transferred their best design to the foam board and drew the lines over with a ball point pen to created crevasses. They rolled ink and pressed paper on top to created a printed series for display.
Other activities in middles school art electives include fantastic world drawings in Fantasy art.
Bouquets and weaving baskets are being created in Making Presents class.
Video class recently created videos on how to make origami. Currently they are practicing drawing realistic eyes.
October Middle School notes:
Spotlight on art electives with Ms. Martucci:
Painting students have been working on a planned out non-representation painting. Their abstract themes are inspired by artists like Paul Klee. Beginning with 4 or more small sketches to work on composition ideas., they then picked their best design to draw in color pencil. Their final step will be to create a painting from their planned out design. The final finished project will display each stage of this process.
Fantasy Drawing elective is focusing on facial proportions. A pre-instructional drawing from student imaginations will be compared with drawing done after focused practice. Working on realistic facial proportions, students practiced basic rules then drew portraits from life. As their final piece, students took 1/2 of a magazine face and drew 1/2 as a fantasy character. Knowing the correct facial proportions is a good way to make more believable drawings as these artists change and exaggerate features to create fantasy characters.
Sculpture class recently worked in clay to create dragons and other challenging and fun sculptures. These projects are currently drying before they can be bisque fired in a kiln. Their final step is to glaze and then the ceramic sculptures are fired a second time to make them vitrified and permanent.
Take a peek at some past projects:
First Cherry Blossom Branches:
On display in the art room is a colorful show of cherry blossom branch ink paintings by first grade. Often, students are asked to add more details to their drawings and to fill the page with designs. In this lesson, students worked on simple beauty. They painted a calligraphic line using a paint brush and black ink. Students painted an elegant branch and glued on pink tissue paper blossoms. The finished paintings have a black frame and red yarn to create the look of a hanging scroll.
A peak in the Middle Art Electives:
Art Costa writes about the Habits of Mind of successful people. Some Habits of Mind we often use in art include “Thinking Flexibly” and “Creating, Imagining and Innovating.” The projects we work on in art have themes that allow for many answers, leaving plenty of room for creative solutions. Students are showing a willingness to take chances and try new things as they develop their projects.
Middle school classes this trimester include Drawing Skills, Painting Skills, Useful Crafts and Marionette Musical.
Useful Crafts class is up-cycling old CDs by removing the labels, creating radial designs with sharpies, puffy paint and translucent color paint. The finished projects have a beautiful stained glass effect and make unique sun catcher for windows.
Drawing class is finding that a plain #2 pencil in the right hands can create endless tone variations, soft shadows, and realistic drawings. They are working with 1 point perspective as they attempt to create believable environments.
Painting students are inventing their own ways to demonstrate color theory by planning out new creative color “wheel “ designs.
Marionette Musical class combines art and music. Students are choosing a song and will develop marionette characters from their own designs to create a musical skit.
A peak in Elementary art:
Kindergarten recently worked on 3-D forms. They colored strips of paper, then curled them to made loops. They learned how to glue the strips into chains.
1st and 2nd grade designed woven paper mats. Second grade 2 had the added challenge of overlapping color strips to create a beautiful design. 3rd grade has been working on drawing skills. They focused on shapes as they drew Pokémon style characters. They used their character drawing and story telling skills to created a comic book. 4th and 5th grade are working on demonstrating the concept of color and mood. They looked at the Fauvist artist Andre Derain as inspiration for their paintings.
What’s happening in art class?
Recently:
Lower grades grades designed parks as they demonstrated “form” as an art concept. They folded, twisted curled and glued to create a tiny 3-D model. Students tested for strength by turning their sculptures upside down.
Cross curricular activities included 2nd grade landform paintings that not only complement their classroom studies but also demonstrate color theory. 4th and 5 th grade created art to wear by weaving bracelets on a loom which ties in with their Native American studies.
Middle school crafts elective is excited to start their tie-die project. Art exploration just finished painting very cool pinch pots. artist portraits class wrote about and created a work inspired by a favorite artist of their choice
Lower grades have been exploring elements of art and principles of design. These are concepts we can use to create, enjoy, and understand art. Like understanding parts of writing, these concepts are tools that help us see different layers in art.
Lower grades explored the concepts of different kinds of lines and how they make textures and designs. Then Kinder & 1st practiced their skills by drawing the theme “A Beautiful Day” while 2nd grade got more specific with “A Tree in Nature”
Artists use different materials. Lower grades explored this with rocks as they illustrated the concepts of texture, variety, arrangement
Rock Arrangement
and balance. They had fun creating rock arrangements in lines, stacks and mini environments.
Upper grades are working on a three week Zentangle Name design. Planning in pencil began creating and refining their letters. Next, they added sharpie outlines to make their letters bold. As they move forward, students judge the progress of their work and make decisions about areas that need strengthening. Their art tool box concepts includes line, color, texture, balance, unity and variety.
Middle school classes:
USEFUL CRAFTS is creating a woven belt using a straw loom. ARTIST PORTRAITS is drawing famous artist like Van Gogh, Frida Kahlo and Pablo Picasso. EXPLORATIONS IN ART is designing one point perspective name designs. GARBAGE BAND chose songs and started designs for their recycled art instruments.
Ms. Martucci
Some more cool places to learn about art:
CHECK LIST: My art demonstrates:
Spotlight on Art: Demonstrating Knowledge Innovatively.
One of our school wide learning outcomes is to demonstrate knowledge innovatively – art is a great place to put this into use! As we work on art concepts, there are many opportunities to combine lessons with other classroom assignments.
Some highlights from 2016-17
Second grade used art to demonstrate their understanding of land forms in a fun and engaging way. This cross-curriculum activity afforded students an opportunity to use their studies of land forms to help their art and for their art to help demonstrate their understanding of land forms in a visual way. Students analyzed art by artist Wayne Thiebaud and described his use of color and value in beautiful landscapes that are both true to life and artistically painted.
Third grade’s trip to the insect museum created another great opportunity. Students thought about the symmetry and the shapes of insects to create artistic beetle drawings. To create these works, students needed to understand the parts of a beetle or the drawings would not look authentic. As inspiration, we looked at “The Stag Beetle” by Albrecht Durer. We also used our class computer to see collections of beautiful beetles. Beetles come in many colors and shapes so we had plenty of choices from dung beetles to lady bugs and more.
5th grade combined art with their writing assignment. Working with descriptions they wrote on their ipads, they drew suspect sketches. Students thought about facial proportions and expression as they worked. The drawings made great illustrations for the student’s stories.
Middle School “Creative Eye” display in the art room received a great response from viewers. A color wheel is a technical tool artists can use to help with mixing paint and using color families. Middle school practiced mixing colors and instead of a simple diagram, students made creative color wheels with an eye as the theme. The meaning gets deeper still when you think about how it is the eye that sees the colors.
These paintings and drawings created by our young artists show a wide variety of innovative ways to share and demonstrate our understanding.
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Resources
www.crockerartmuseum.com
https://www.famsf.org/