2nd Grade Lichtenstein Self Portraits

This is one of my favorite lessons. I saw examples somewhere on the Internet last year and thought, "hey that looks like fun". I have learned somethings teaching this for the second year and this year's projects turned out even better than the previous year.

So here's the rundown. We started off by looking at an image of one of Lichtenstein's paintings that is at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Students identified the painting only had primary colors, looked like it came from a comic book, and told a story. These observations were the basis for our works.

We worked together to create self-portraits that were big on our paper, had good proportions, and had either a thought cloud or a word bubble (we had a fun time discussing the difference). Students were to either write something they would say in a bubble, or something they think about in a cloud. Surprisingly, many students actually followed directions to make the words big enough to read from far away. After making any corrections, students traced their drawings with black sharpie.

The next step was to use multicultural washable markers to color our skin color. I had students test the markers on the back of their papers and hold their hand next to the test spot to find the closest match to their own skin. This always leads to a great discussion on how all people are different dark or light versions of brown and no one is really white or black.

Our final step was adding our primary colors with crayon. In all steps, students were expected to show their best craftsmanship, filling in white and keeping our colors at a unified darkness, as well as trying to make them smooth looking and not rushed.

I love this assignment because it helps me to know a little more about the students personal interests and character.

The student that created this self-portrait always impresses me. She has not spoke a word to one person at our school in two years, but has the most phenomenal artwork.

This may be my favorite from this year. The student really showed his personality.

HEY STELLA!

For three weeks now, my 1st graders have looked at the artwork of Frank Stella. I do feel that these are a little more "in the style of" Frank Stella than I would like. But hey, they gave us an opportunity to focus on some skills that I have noticed over the past two years students need a bit more practice in; placement, coloring with markers, and cutting with scissors.

During this first grading cycle (6 weeks) in my district, 1st graders focus only on lines, and start to move toward shapes. We started this year practicing using a ruler to make straight lines. Next we were to explore curved lines. Since we

looked at Gene Davis for straight lines, I decided we would stay in a similar vein and discover Frank Stella.

I shared with my students the first time I saw a Frank Stella painting in person at the Saint Louis Art Museum, and how I was blown away by the huge wall of color that stood in front of me with its big swooping curved lines. We looked at some images of his works taking note of what kinds of lines we could find, and how they made shapes.

For this assignment, we used clear protractors.

Once we were done looking through them like sunglasses, we talked about placement. I encouraged students to lay their protractors on their paper and experiment with where they wanted to place the shape of it, changing their idea several times and selecting the best placement. We did this three times, purposely overlapping a bit each time to create new shapes. I learned after the first class that did this not to trace our shape more than three times. Way too many lines after three. After tracing our semicircle shapes, we used an eraser and selected a few areas only that we wanted to edit, removing lines that would create small spaces of color, or helping make some shapes more interesting.

After editing our drawing, students used markers to fill in the newly created shapes with color. We put a lot of effort into slowing down and allowing the marker enough time to soak into the paper so that we could not see through it. 1st graders want to color so fast with markers that it looks like they are drying out even when they are not. A lot of attention was given to slowing down during the coloring of this project. We also had demonstrations on ways to color to without having white holes in our color. Many students were directed to go back and put more attention on filling the shapes with color and slowing down to look for areas that needed more work. The opportunity to really focus on quality and not subject matter was one of the main reasons for creating this project.

 Our final step was to carefully cut out our designs and glue them on black construction paper. Glue and  scissor use are some of the skills that I feel 1st graders need a bit more practice with so that they can have more confidence as the move through school. This assignment allowed us to follow our scissor rules, turn our paper while cutting, and listen carefully to directions such as "do not cut your design into more than one piece." This was also a great first opportunity this year to practice "dot dot not a lot", which I was surprised how well my students did this year. In the past, it has been a challenge to keep their dots small, and not have "puddle, puddle, a lot".

A Day I Saw A Rainbow

 This was a rather simple one day project with my Kindergartners. In keeping with my goals this year of focusing on skills with my Kindergartners and 1st graders, this was an assignment made to teach three things; drawing big, drawing curved lines, and marker skills (including listening to the cap click when closing the markers). For some gross motor skills, we practiced making the biggest curved lines we could while standing next to our seats starting as far as we could to one side, touching the floor, then stretching toward the ceiling lights as we came across to touch the floor on our other sides. We also did the reverse, the biggest happy faces we could draw in the air with our fingers.

We discussed times that we had seen a rainbow, and what kinds of weather we have on days when we see rainbows. To my surprise, some students claimed they had never seen a rainbow. While that is believable, it still made me just a bit sad. After discussing times we had seen a rainbow then created our drawings of "A Day I Saw A Rainbow." The kindergartners as always were super excited for the first time to use markers in the art room. Being the first time they had used markers with me, I demonstrated ways to take our time, to fill in areas with color, to fill our pages with color leaving no white, and not let our marker caps get away from us. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised with how well the Kindergartners did for only their 3rd assignment in art, and one that focused on slowing down and really filling our pages with color.