Building Klimt

First Grade students looked at artwork by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt. They noticed that he often painted with gold paint and used swirly lines, black and white rectangles and different colored circles. Students read "The Magical Tree" by Myriam Ouyessad, which is a fictional story explaining a couple of Klimt's most famous artworks. Students listened carefully to specific directions such as, “draw flowers at the bottom of your page that have green stems and pink and purple flowers. Draw brown swirls above these flowers.” Students discovered that everyone’s artwork turned out differently even though each student was following the same directions.

 

"The Magic Raincoat" by Ryan David

Kindergarten students read The Magic Raincoat by Ryan David. They brainstormed ideas of what they would wish for if they had a magic raincoat. Students created portraits of themselves wearing a raincoat with crayons, and added raindrops and puddles with white crayon. Then the magic happened...they painted blue watercolor over their background, and the raindrops and puddles magically appeared! They learned that artists call this technique a watercolor resist.

 

Solar System Paintings

4^th grade students tried different watercolor painting techniques. They tried stippling, blotting, drybrush, wet on wet, wet on dry, salt, blooming and plastic wrap. The paper used to try all of these watercolor techniques was used for the planets in their solar system. Then students glued their planets to black paper and tried the spattering technique to make stars.

 

 

Monet's Water Lilies

Second grade students studied Claude Monet, a French Impressionist who lived 100 years ago. He was one of the first artists to think of painting outside. He loved to paint nature so much that he moved to the country to paint. He is famous for painting the water lilies that grew in the pond behind his house. Students discussed his water lily paintings and used tempera paints to paint their own pond, with painterly brushstrokes, just like Monet. They used tissue papers and green painted paper to create lily pads and water lilies.

Yayoi Kusama Still Life

Kindergarten students learned that artists will often gather small objects together to practice drawing and painting them, and that this is called a still life. They looked at many different examples of still life drawings and paintings. Then they drew flowers in a vase, a popular choice for a still life. They also studied contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama and discovered that she loves polka dots and paints them on all of her artworks. The. they painted their flower still life with dots too.