The Starry Night Collaborative Project

"This morning I saw the country from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big."
- Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother Theo,
describing his experience painting The Starry Night.

Vincent Van Gogh completed The Starry Night, one of his most well known paintings, while at an asylum in Saint-Remy in 1989. After reading and writing about the painting in their Language Arts class, grade 8 students created the collaborative project shown above. Each student reproduced a part of the painting in oil pastels on paper, emulating the swirling brushstrokes so prominent in this painting and many others of the prolific artist. When the students' pieces where placed together they created this gorgeous version of Van Gogh's masterpiece.

In the Style of Georgia O'Keeffe

"A flower is relatively small. Everyone has many

associations with a flower... still, in a way, nobody

really sees a flower, really, it is so small....

So I said to myself, I'll paint what I see... but I'll

paint it big and they will be surprised into taking

time to look at it... even busy New Yorkers [will]

take time to see what I see of flowers."

- Georgia O’Keeffe

The American artist Georgia O'Keeffe has always been a favorite of mine. Our 4/5 class studied the use of line, color and form in her gorgeous flower paintings, then created their own flowers using oil pastels on paper, working from photos as a reference. Drawing the flowers oversized and filling the paper forces the viewer to see the flowers more as abstract shapes than actual flowers. Click on any image to get to the picture gallery for many more images.

Christmas fun

I hope everyone had a wonderful, joyful Christmas. In the few weeks before the holiday, most of our grades worked on projects with a Christmas theme. Here are a few from our younger students. Kindergarten and first graders created reindeer cards. They cut and folded reindeer, glued them to construction paper then had some fun painting on snow with Q-tips.

 

When their cards were completed, students created Christmas tree ornaments from chenille stems.

For their own project our second and third graders stacked strips of colored paper to create classic Christmas tree shapes to which ornaments were added. Fun! 

Click on any image to get to the picture gallery and more trees.

          

Notan Designs

Nōtan is a Japanese design concept involving the play and placement of light and dark as they are placed next to each other in art. Our grade 6 students created cut paper notan designs using a single color and black. The results show their images as both positive and negative shapes and create these striking works of art. Click on any image below to see more in the picture gallery.

Folk Art Cats

Our 2/3 class studied some examples of folk art cats, noting the typical elements of bright color and naive style in the work. 'Kitty.'-Engraving, 19th-century, by George White, Vermont

After we practiced drawing simple cats, students had fun creating their own cats with crayon, then mounting the work on black paper to create a border. The border was decorated with colorful symbols and shapes using chalk pastels. I love the results. Click on any image to get to the picture gallery and see lots more cats.

Batik Pumpkins

I love the art of batik and the colorful cloth it produces, but the traditional hot wax and dye process can be difficult to do in a classroom. Our 4/5 class used a modified form of batik to create these colorful pumpkins, then added some leaf prints in gold and silver to finish their designs. 

After closely studying pumpkins we brought into our classroom, students practiced making contour drawings to gain understanding of their shape and form. They carefully drew their own pumpkins using warm fall colors in crayon, the wax part of the process. The drawings were crumpled up to brake up the surface of the crayon, but not tear the paper. The pumpkins were then completely covered in black tempera paint in place of traditional dye, and the paint was wiped off the surface. The black paint stayed only in the areas where the crayon surface had been broken up. The results are shown below, aren't they great? Click on any image to get to the picture gallery for closer viewing.

 

Our Very Busy Spiders

Kindergarten and first grade students read the story "The Very Busy Spider" by Eric Carle,
then created their our very colorful spider webs using oil pastels on black paper. Spiders were fashioned from construction paper and chenille stems and attached to their webs with yarn. When the webs were completed, the spiders all rested, "it had been a very, very busy day." 
Please click on any image below to get to the picture gallery.

 

Fall Leaf Monoprints

Fall is such a great time to make use of materials from nature in our artwork. Recently our sixth grade class used fallen leaves to make these beautiful monoprints. The backs of the leaves were covered lightly with metallic tempera paint, then pressed onto paper. When the leaves were removed they left lovely detailed prints showing their delicate stucture. Students then used sponges to paint around the leaves. When dry they filled in the leaf prints with colored pencil to finish. The results are wonderful, don't you think? Please click on any image to get to the picture gallery. 

Kandinsky Circle Paintings

Wassily Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely abstract works. His painting Colour Study: Squares With Concentric Circles (1913) is one of his best known and most treasured works. Our 2/3 class created their own circles starting with oil crayons and adding watercolor backgrounds. Click on the large image to see indivdual student work.

In the Style of Warhol

During the 1960s, the artist Andy Warhol began creating the paintings he is best known for today. He loved popular culture and decided to paint what he loved. His silk-screened images of the cultural icons of his day helped to found the "Pop" art movement. Our students took a modern cultural icon, the sneaker, and created their own versions of Pop art in the style of Andy Warhol. Click on the image below to see the individual images.