Art: No Hearts; No Smiley Faces

The girls have started a painting unit in the easel room.  They will paint a series of opposites using line, shape, color, and texture to express the feelings.  They started with "scared" and "safe".  They discussed when they feel these feelings and then how they could show these feelings without using pictures of familiar things (like hearts and smiley faces). 

Here's a record of our discussion:

Here's a glimpse in process:

Art: Imaginary Worlds

The girls looked at the work of Paul Klee and noticed the shapes in his buildings, castles, and cities looked like building blocks. They built a little world with table blocks, photographed it, and then drew the shapes on the paper.  They colored each shape in with colored pencils and outlined the perimeter around the the building.  This is a lot of work with geometric shapes! Finally, they created little characters and made up a story about their little world (inspired by Dr. Seuss) that they recorded on their iPads.  

Art: Playing with Dolls

The girls are learning to draw complicated forms starting with large recognizable shapes. Each girl was given a doll from the collection in the studio.  After sketching the large shapes, they painted them.  Then they worked on medium shapes and small shapes.  They will add detail with colored pencils next class. The doll portraits will be the main subject of a larger work done in the style of Matisse.  

Art: Finger Knitting

We started a new unit in fiber arts with a discussion about the things we've learned that seemed really hard at first.  The girls named various activities including swinging on the monkey bars, making paper chains, making fortune tellers, and teaching a dog a new trick. All the examples helped demonstrate the essential qualities of learning a new skill: observing closely, working with a master, remembering the steps in order, repetition and reward.  Then, they were introduced to the basic steps of finger knitting. Next, class they will have a long chain to show for their efforts. 

Art: Masks can...

The girls finished their masks by painting big and small shapes to make patterns and adding decorative elements like beads, buttons, and feathers.  They considered how their mask could transform them and told their story using the video feature on their iPad. Next they will wear their masks and present them to their classmates.

Art: Making Masks

The pre-first girls are layering shapes to create a mask.  They chose a big shape for the base.  Then, they traced smaller shapes to make the features.  Looking at a collection of masks from around the world, they noticed several ways artists emphasized the features.  One way was popping it out! So, the girls are using toilet paper tubes to "pop out" one or more of their features.  

Art: Spooky Shadow Stories

An "art crit" in Pre-first involves a lot of storytelling.  Today, we walked around the large shadow paintings and students described the creature in the work and its special characteristics.  Some were monsters who blew bubbles or made scribbles.  Some were slime goblins that transform slime into playdough and befriends the animals at the zoo.  Then, they described where the creatures live: forest, woods, jungle, and haunted house.  The girls did the details of their backgrounds in white oil pastel and will paint over it in black India ink.  Ask your daughter about her creature!

Art: Spooky Shadow Paintings

The girls have added more painted shadows to their figures.  The room was set up with light/shadow stations.  They painted the shadows of  interesting objects like whisks, slotted spoons, tree branches, corn husks and stools.  Then, they traced different objects with thin black Sharpie lines like scissors, tape rolls, and plastic forks whiling imagining the figure becoming a creature, a monster or sorts.