Valentine Hearts in the Style of Jim Dine

To celebrate Valentine's Day and learn about warm and cool colors, our 2/3 class took a look at some of the work of the American artist Jim Dine.

Using black crayon, students first drew a heart shape in the middle of their paper, then added lines across the paper going through their heart. The resulting sections were then filled with warm or cool colors and watercolor paint was added if the artist wished. Click on the image below to see more and be sure to have a Happy Valentine's Day!

Colored Alphabets in the Style of Jasper Johns

To start off the new school year our kindergarten and first graders created their own alphabet art in the style of the American contemporary artist Jasper Johns, b. 1930.

Jasper Johns, Colored Alphabet
Oil, encaustic and paper collage on panel

Our versions were done on 9" x 12" white sulphite paper divided into 25 rectangles (the letters I and J shared a space.) Kindergarteners traced over the lightly pre-printed letters in crayon, then painted over each rectangle with water-color paints. They watched the crayon magically "resist" the paint while the bare paper absorbed it. Oohh, it's fun to see that process for the first time! First graders were challenged to draw their own letters before painting. The artists had their choice of color selection, and it's interesting to see how different each piece looks. Click on any image below to see more of their terrific work.

Flowers in the Style of Picasso

The artist Pablo Picasso created this lithograph for a peace demonstration held in Stockholm, July 16-22, 1958. Each of the 200 lithographs in the edition is hand signed and dated by the artist. Our kindergarten and first grade artists created their own versions of this iconic image. Working with a partner, they first traced each other's hand. Then each student outlined his own hand in marker. Stems, tissue paper centers and colorful petals were added to create a bright flower bouquet. After signing and dating their work it was complete, and just in time for Mother's Day! Clicking on the image below will bring you to the gallery and lots more beautiful flowers.

 

Valentine LOVE

The artist Robert Indiana's rendering of LOVE in paintings and sculpture has become an icon of 20th-century art. For Valentine's Day our 4/5 students recreated his work with craft sticks. My thanks to Kathy Barbro at the website artprojectsforkids.org for this great project idea. I love how our students always add creativity and make an idea their own! Click on any image below for lots of great results.

 

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.

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.

The Scream

Recently, the Edvard Munch oil pastel entitled "The Scream" sold for a record-breaking amount at auction in New York City. Our seventh grade class studied this iconic example of German Expressionism then created their own versions, complete with the source of their own greatest fear lurking somewhere on the page. Click on any image to get to the Scream Gallery then decide, what makes YOU scream?