Paint Blob Creations

I found this project idea on the Dali's Moustache blog @ http://dalimoustache.blogspot.com/2011/12/symmetrical-blob-creatures.html and loved it.  The process itself seemed really fun and after my fifth graders just got done with learning how to draw their 3-D block letter names, we were a bit sick of rules and rulers so I thought this would be a great break and I thought of a great way to take this project in my own direction and relate it to our surrealism study we did early this year.

We started by blobbing on some paint with squirt bottles.  I prepared five different colors and encouraged students to overlap colors to create new mixtures.  We folded a piece of 9"x12" drawing paper in half before we painted and I had them paint only one side.  After squirting on some paint and getting it all messy looking (by far the student's favorite part) we folded it together and opened it up to see what we had created.  I talked with the students about what the folding had done to our painting.  We discussed symmetry and what it meant along with things that are symmetrical.

In the next class, I introduced what we were doing by asking if anyone had ever laid out in the summer and looked up at the clouds.  I asked if they had ever seen any clouds that looked like animals or other things that we recognized.  I asked them if the clouds actually really looked like those things or if they just reminded them of what we already knew.  We talked about how our brains work, how they take new information and relate it to things that we already know.  This is how we learn and process new information.  I then gave a demonstration using my own blob painting and asked students what they saw in mine.  We came up with about 10-15 different things and I chose a few of the stranger images and outlined them in sharpie.  We talked about identifying an image within the paint or using the entire painted area as am image.  We also talked about positive and negative space, especially since some of the most interesting shapes were in our unpainted white negative space.  I allowed students to choose what they wanted to outline in their paintings and before they outlined we passed them around our tables and helped each other identify things.

In the third class, I again brought up the symmetry in our paintings and asked students if they knew what asymmetry was.  Most did not know but were able to figure it out when I said, "If symmetry means both sides are the same, then asymmetry means..."  We talked about asymmetry for a bit and told them that today we would be cutting the imagined images out of our symmetrical painting and gluing them onto a bigger sheet of paper to create an asymmetrical scene.  I brought up our study of surrealism and related to all of the strange and unrelated images we found in our paintings.  Students then cut out their images, glued them on, and began drawing and coloring the background scene.  I was blown away by the creative and imaginative scenes that they made.  I was literally laughing out loud at some of their comical concoctions.  Enjoy!

3-D Block Letters

I wanted to so a short project with my 5th graders that worked with some perspective and using rulers because I noticed that many of them seemed really rusty.  When I asked how many of them knew how to draw letters or shapes in 3-D and only a couple students raised their hands...I knew it was time.  I had come across a fun little 3-D name project on the Dali's Moustache Blog @http://dalimoustache.blogspot.com/search/label/5th%20grade (which is a super amazing blog by the way, and if you haven't seen it yet you really need to check it out).

Since part of the problem was the 5th graders not knowing how to use their rulers properly (seems crazy I know but honestly I had kids flipping it back and forth between inches and centimeters with a super confused look on their face saying "way are some of these numbers super small?" YIKES) so I made them all measure out a grid on their paper in which we would be drawing our block letters.  Students could either use their name or nicknames.  After creating a rectangle with divisions every 1-2", depending on how many letters their name had in it, we drew a center line to help us judge where to draw our letters.  I had handouts of the alphabet in block letters for students to look at and did a demonstration for the whole class, explaining how I would draw five different block letters, I let the students choose which five letters they wanted to see.  They gave their best efforts to draw the block letters as I tried to help out as many as possible.

In the next class we talked about one point perspective and how three dimensional things seem to extend back into space.  I did a demonstration and passed out some examples showing one point perspective examples on some letters and shapes.  Most students picked up on it really well and finished with time to spare.

In the last class, I showed students how to make their letters end, so that they do not look like they extend all the way back to the vanishing point.  If they liked how it looked going all they way back to the vanishing point I allowed them to keep it like that but most wanted to make their letters look like true block letters.  I gave a demo and let them at it.  This was by far the most difficult part but the students did a great job helping each other out and working together.  I also showed students how to shade in the letters to make them look even more convincingly 3-dimensional.  We talked about shadows and where they would be cast in our letters.  I used caves and valleys as examples for the shading and that seemed to work well.  The students colored them in, cut them out and mounted them on a background paper.  It wasn't the most aesthetically pleasing project but that also wasn't the goal, the goal was to get better with rulers, measuring, and learn how to use one point perspective.  Overall, a SUCCESS!!

Surrealist Collage

I found this idea on a fellow blogger's post and loved the potential.  Surrealism is my favorite type of art and I get really excited and enthused to talk about so I new that this was going to be one of those projects that the kids were going to get excited about as well.  I put together a really great compilation of all different types of surrealist artists and artworks.  I tried to cover a few different types of medium such as painting, photography, sculpture, and collage.  I was a little worried that when the students saw the surrealist art they might not get it or understand why someone would make something from their subconscious if they didn't understand exactly what they were making.  There was some of this going on but the students held a great discussion, especially when I talked about Dada and put up the good ole Marcel Duchamp Urinal.  We discussed whether this was art for about 10 minutes in each class and all of the kids had something to say.  LOVED LOVED LOVED the great talks we had about art.  They also really enjoyed the paintings of Salvador Dali, Vladimir Kush, and Rene Magritte.  I showed some of Scott Mutter's photography and that was very well received too.

After the discussion and determining a basic definition as to what Surrealism is, I explained to students what collage was and how it truly lends itself to creating realistic and fun surreal images.  I demonstrated to the students some different ways to create something that was surreal.  We talked about putting animals heads on human bodies and the likewise, and how this was indeed surreal but that I wanted them to try to go beyond that and make something unique and creative.  The students worked very hard on these and it was really fun seeing the progression of their ideas and how inspired they became by the material and images they found.

Dragonflies: Half Scientist/ Half Artist

This project was another that I borrowed from the wonderful Sara Wilda :)  I made a little slide show and gathered some very interesting information about Dragonflies and discussed it with my fifth grade classes.  I was worried that maybe they would not be interested in my random dragon fly factoids but once again found that as long as I was enthusiastic about it and brought it up in a fun and cool way, they loved it.  The students, and mine as well, favorite fact about dragonflies is how they are viewed and respected in the Japanese culture.  Children their capture dragonflies by tying one of their long, thin, black hairs to a small pebble and tossing it up into the air in a field with many dragonflies.  Dragonflies instinctively go after the tiny pebble resembling their prey and get tangled in the hair and fall to the ground.  Very cool.

After discussing Dragonflies and their meanings in different cultures, I told the students that for this project we were going to be 1/2 scientists and 1/2 artists.  The scientist side comes from studying the dragonfly and all of its body parts.  I printed out pictures of all kinds of different species for students to look at and I demonstrated on the white board how to divide up our papers to create a grid for the body and wings.  We talked about the head, abdomen, and thorax and how to make each part proportional to the other.

In the next class, the students entered artist mode.  I explained and demonstrated how now that we had our dragonfly drawn accurately and realistically, we are able to add some creativity and imagination by designing the rest or our dragonflies with some wild lines and style.  After drawing and designing there dragonfly with pencil, we traced over it with a fine point sharpie.

Once all the sharpie work was done, it was time to add some crazy colors.  I put out 10 different colors of liquid watercolor and allowed the students to move around the room and paint with as many colors as they wanted.  After the painting was done and the paper was dried we cut out the dragonflies and made a windy sky background paper with some white chalk and glued on our dragonflies.

Fun project and the students really did a great job.