Students have been learning about Vincent Van Gogh.  We read about his life and have been exploring some of his more famous paintings.  With his ‘A Starry Night’ we created our own versions using oil pastels as a basis and finishing it off with a watered down blue tempra wash.

Students learned an important lesson that they need to ensure that they use a solid base of the oil pastels – especially with the light colours (white and yellow) – before doing the wash.  While the white is not seen on the white paper beforehand, it is extremely important that it is present to repel the paint and become visible afterwards.

When we saw the dried results we needed to go back and add in these vital details with more oil pastels.  I think the results are quite striking.

Students enjoyed making these lovely Easter Lilies by tracing their own hands and curving them into the lily petals.  These were mounted onto colourful egg-shaped backings.  Final touches were added by making a grass base, stems, and leaves out of green contruction paper – as well as making yellow stamens by twisting yellow tissue paper and gluing them into the petals.

Enjoy the long weekend!  It is supposed to be sunny and warm.

Happy Easter!!  Watch out for bunnies:)

After a two month process our art pieces are ready to be adjudicated by the Burnaby Art Gallery tomorrow morning.

This ‘competition’ is a biennial event put on by the Burnaby Art Gallery – every other year this is available to elementary school students.  Each year there is a central theme.  This year the theme is ‘places of memory’.

Division 5’s Places of Memories

This was quite a wonderful process for our class.  We initially read Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge, by Mem Fox.  This is a great story about a young boy who lives near an “old folks’ home”.  When he hears that his ‘senior’ friend, Miss Nancy, has ‘lost her memory’ he begins a quest to discover what memories are, and then works to find her memories for her.  It is a rather touching story.

We spent a fair bit of time discussing and learning about memories, including thinking about what emotions are involved in our memories.  Students drew and wrote about memories associated with a variety of feelings.  We then focussed on powerful memories – ones that are so strong that they are not easily forgotten.

Students made a preliminary drawing about the place associated with their ‘powerful family memory’.  They then drew a second smaller drawing where they zoomed in (focussed) on the key elements of that memorable place.

Their final pictures were created on heavy card stock using plasticene as the medium.  Students used their prior knowledge of colour theory to create a variety of shades and tints by blending different colours with white or black.  They also made interesting colours by blending different colours together to achieve their desired effect.

Students wrote about their pictures (memories), as their “artists’ statements”, which are a requirement for entry into the Arts Alive programme.  They also chose titles for their pieces of art.

As you can see, from the above photo, these finished pieces are on display in the Multi Purpose room at school.  Tomorrow morning a Jury Panel, from the Burnaby Art Gallery, will come to Rosser and look at this art.  Each piece will be photographed to be included in the digital display which will be shown on a television screen at the gallery.  Some pieces (hopefully) will be chosen to be taken to the gallery for display.  We will find out tomorrow!!

Mrs. O’Meara’s and Mrs. Iverson’s classes also produced pieces of art for Arts Alive this year.  Hopefully some pieces will be chosen from each of the three classes.

Once the Jury Panel has left our school we will be hosting a ‘gallery walk’ for the other classes in the school to come to see all three classes’ work.  Then our great pieces of plasticene art will be put in the display case outside the Multi-Purpose room.  Please come by to look at them!!

We spent an enjoyable (but rather messy!) afternoon on Friday working with a new art medium – charcoal sticks.

Students began with a shape that they cut out of tag board.  They coated the edges of this with charcoal and then placed the piece of tag onto their white drawing paper.  Using a finger they pushed the charcoal ‘dust’ off the tag piece and onto their paper ensuring that they remove it completely around the circumference of the shape.

Through repeating this process, and overlapping the outlined charcoal shapes, they each covered their drawing paper with a very interesting, and unique, design.

We have been enjoying getting our hands dirty in Art class!

Our Grade 1’s spent a wonderful afternoon yesterday creating nice, fat, jolly looking snowmen – and some snowwomen, as well!!  Students built these snowpeople around a wooden dowel, attached to a baseboard, which creates a hollow form inside.  They then made hats for them.  I attached these after school when I took the snowmen off of the dowel so they could dry.

As our Grade 2’s had made snowpeople last year in my class, this year they created Christmas bells.  Most of the students made these last week – two who were absent last week worked yesterday on their bells.  We were very fortunate to have Mrs. Figueroa’s student EA (Miss M) come into our room as an extra helper.  You can tell which are the most recently made due to the colour difference.

Once all of the pieces are dried they will be fired in the kiln, glazed, and then re-fired.  Final touches will be added and then they will be ready to go home!!

 

We created some beautiful poppies for Remembrance Day.  We began by drawing the poppies on white drawing paper.  Students then traced over their pencil lines with china grease markers.  Using tempera paint, students painted the centres green and the petals red.  They were encouraged to go ‘over the lines’ of the china markers.  A few days later, when the paint was dried, students cut out their poppies and glued them onto dark green construction paper.

I really enjoy how all the poppies are uniquely different from each other.  These 9 are only a sample of the class collection.  They are all displayed in the classroom on the back bulletin board – with two on the bulletin board outside of our door in the hallway.  Drop by to see them if you get a chance.