Every year the Burnaby Art Gallery hosts an art show (called Arts Alive) featuring works by Burnaby students.  They alternate the years by secondary and elementary grades.  This year it is the elementary schools’ turn to participate.  Teachers choose whether to participate, or not.  Four classes at Rosser have opted into participating this year.  Each year there is a theme for the art pieces; this year it is Art and Math.

Our class worked through the process of creating a group art piece by looking into the works of Pablo Picasso.  We read a story called, “The Girl With the Ponytail”, which is about Picasso and his series of work centred around one model named Sylvette.  We looked at a variety of his art pieces and at how he used many different shapes (our math connection) instead of typically-created faces.

Students created a few different faces, in different sizes, with black Sharpie pens.  They coloured the faces in with a variety of waxed crayons.  They chose their favourite piece to be included in our art piece.

We were allowed to create a piece that is 18” x 24” so we used a canvas of that size.  The grade one girls painted it with one hue of blue paint.  They then used sponges to add layers of other tints/shades of blue paint, as well as some white paint, to form the backdrop.  On top of this the students’ individual art-created faces were glued.

The jury from the Burnaby Art Gallery will be coming to Rosser on Monday, March 4th to look at our school’s four entries.  They will take photos which will be a part of their digital display.  They will also, hopefully, take the pieces back to be a part of their month-long display in their gallery.  I will keep you informed of the process.  In the meantime, please take a look at the finished work.

Students have been learning about colour theory through our explorations in Art. Two weeks ago they learned about the three primary colours – red, yellow, and blue – and created pictures using just those three crayons.  On Friday we used the primary coloured paints.  They heard a story about a mischievous butterfly who got into Mother Nature’s way while she was painting a garden and ended up being very colourful.  They then experimented with paints and a butterfly shaped paper.  They put dabs of paint on one side of their paper, folded the paper closed, and rubbed the two sides together.  The results were many (mostly) symmetrical butterflies.  They made construction paper bodies which they glued onto the wings today when they were dry.  The addition of pipe cleaner antenna finished the look. Students were encouraged to try and have the primary colours close in some spots so that they could flow together to create the secondary colours – green, orange, and violet (purple) – when pressed together.

These are on the bulletin board at the back of our classroom. 

On Friday we had a lesson on the ‘elements’ of art.  We discussed how elements are parts of a whole.   The six elements of art are: colour; line; shape; form; value; and texture.  To explore a few of these elements we did leaf rubbings using waxed crayons on paper.  We will explore each of these elements over the course of this school year in more depth.

Here are a few individual samples of the students’ work.  All of the art pieces are pinned to the bulletin board in our classroom.  Come by and take a peek.

The Grade Ones heard a story about a giraffe who was embarrassed because he felt he couldn’t dance like all the other animals could.  In fact, they were rather mean to him about it.  A wise cricket taught him to listen to his own music, and to be himself, as we are all unique.  He then created his own style of dance.

We did a directed drawing lesson and created our own ‘Gerald’  the giraffe.  They are on the bulletin board in the hallway outside of our classroom.  I think they look great!