Last Hurrah

In recent classes, students have been making sketches of one another. As a last hurrah, I attempted to make a quick caricature sketch of every student at Lynch-Bustin Elementary School. About six hundred drawings later, I think I got everybody! Have a great summer!

Lynch-Bustin Rocks!

As the finale to our Living History Day (with the theme of "The Sixties"), music teacher Mr. Patt and his band put on a rock concert. Imagine 600 screaming kids, all wearing tie dye t-shirts (thanks to PTG and Mrs. Jacoski). The perfect end to a perfect day! Here's a little video and a few pictures of the concert.

Sixties Day

Today was our school-wide Living History Day with the theme of "The Sixties". Here is our art station all set up for the kids to learn about Pop Art printmaking -- Robert Rauscenberg Style.


Here is guest art educator Anna Wales (my daughter). I stole the idea from her, so I asked her to help get us started.

Here she is demonstrating to Mrs. Yeakel's third grade class.

If you want to know how to do this, you paint muscle rub (Ben Gay) on a freshly printed computer print. We used portraits of famous people from the 1960s. Next you place your white paper over the image and rub with a brayer. A reverse image will be transfered to your white paper.

I would say that this is something best done outside. The smell of the muscle rub is quite strong.

Below are a couple I made as examples. If there's something you want in your print to not be the reverse, you can flip it in Photoshop. Below, I wanted to use a photo of Lennon's handwritten lyrics for "Give Peace a Chance". I reversed it in Photoshop so that the print would look right. On the left is the original, and on the right is the print.

Drawing with Charcoal

For today's drawing we turned the lights out, and made drawings of three-dimensional objects. We're trying to capture the highlights and cast shadows.

We're using charcoal pencils and blending stumps. These are handy little tools that help you blend the charcoal to create a variety of tones.

First Grade Architecture

Here are a few of the finished skyscraper drawings that I promised I'd show you. It's the time of year when markers are starting to run out. I don't know if you know about this trick, but when Crayola markers go dry, you can dip them in water and they work for quite a bit longer.

You get some interesting, lighter variations of some of the color. Also, you get your money's worth out of the markers before you throw them out!

Thinking about Light and Shadow

Our school got some really nice art posters as part of a grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities. One of the works of art second graders are learning about is this one by Edward Hopper, House by the Railroad. How about that four-story tower?!

After answering some discussion questions about this work of art, we decided this painting had a lonely feeling. There are no signs of people, and the shades are all pulled down. Someone suggested that maybe the people moved away because the railroad tracks are so close to the house!

One thing I wanted to point out is that the light source in the picture is very clear. Can you see how the left side of the house is very light and bright -- and the right is shaded with blues and greens and purple?

We're all used to drawing houses with squares, rectangles and triangles -- but we all decided to use some shapes that you might find in Victorian architecture, like the curved Mansard roof and the arched windows with ornamentation. Most of us didn't want to make ours look so lonely, so we made all kinds of signs of life in the surounding area.

Notice how we all started with a main object that was kind of the same, but everybody's picture has things in it that are different.

We tried to make one side of the house in the light, and the other in shadow. We colored with Payons, or painting crayons. These are really neat crayons that you use just like regular crayons. Then you paint over the drawing with water. The crayon turns into paint! I know that I told you that I got them from a leprechaun, but I may as well tell you -- you can order them many places, including here.

Surrealism

There are many different styles of art. Surrealism is one of them. We all know what "real" means, right? The prefix sur means "over, above, beyond, on."

If something is surreal, it contains real things in unreal combinations. Surrealistic art has an odd dreamlike quality. To learn about this style, fourth graders made surrealistic collages, cutting and pasting images into backgrounds where they didn't belong.

Surrealistic art has an odd dreamlike quality. To learn about this style, fourth graders made surrealistic collages, cutting and pasting images into backgrounds where they didn't belong.
When everybody finished their collages, I said, "Okay, now draw your collage."

Surrealistic art has an odd dreamlike quality. To learn about this style, fourth graders made surrealistic collages, cutting and pasting images into backgrounds where they didn't belong.

When everybody finished their collages, I said, "Okay, now draw your collage." A few people panicked until we looked at the paintings of Chagall. See how he made real things, but not necessarily realistically? So, it's okay to draw things "kid-style"!

Joke: "How many surrealists does it take to screw in a light bulb?"

Answer: "A fish."