In the Name of Art

Last Day of the Week, Hudson Art in the Park

After a comparison of a work by Alexander Calder and another by Louise Nevelson the kids decided whether they'd construct a relief or a sculpture. Emily made a swimming pool, Ezra and Matt made contraptions (their description, not mine), Kristen explored the 3-d qualities of pipe-cleaners, Sarah constructed a castle, Jack was thoroughly engrossed with shapes and Sophia was enchanted by glitter-glue:

Until next year at Hudson Springs Park, that's it for the 3rd grade art classes.

Kid's Printmaking Day 4, Skipped Day 3

Sadly, I had too much to do yesterday and didn't take any photos of our collage and chine colle class, but today we did printmaking and it was the first time the kids had tried that.

This is Jack and he's drawing a dinosaur on a styrafoam plate, the tyrannosaurus and he seemed to have the same expression for a minute or two.

Matt, Ezra and Emily are experiencing the focus involved in carving a piece of eraser with a lino-cutter.  The pink styrafoam printing plate has been completed and if you look close you can see the drawing there.

Same group as above including, at the end of the row, Kristen, as they begin to ink their printing-plates. The yellow marks are from a stamp pad.

I could tell from the blue smudge on her face that Kristen was serious about making the best prints possible! Tomorrow, we tackle relief wood sculpture ala Louise Nevelson.

Art in the Park, 2nd Day: Landscape Painting

The first part of today's class we walked around the park and did small pencil sketches of the different scenic vistas in Hudson Springs Park.

More sketching, after talking about why artists draw and paint landscapes. These bright artists thought it was because it is beautiful and is all around you, and I agree.

We were going to do 5 landscapes but settled for 3 and a smaller book (our time was running out).

We took the drawings back to the shelter and after a demo began to paint.

It was a very windy day to work with lots of sheets of paper, so to dry the landscapes, we had to weight them down with rocks.

We began our books today, but didn't finish the covers so we'll have to do that tomorrow AND start the collage. If it's as windy tomorrow, we may do something with wood because that can't blow away!

Day 1, Art in the Park

Seven delightful 3rd graders took part in today's art lessons. First we made name magnets to serve as an attendance marker and to help Ms. Saxe (me) to learn names. Those will stay with the students all week and then on the last day they'll take them home. Some shots of our rapid progress with the magnets:

Our final project was a Me-mobile combining a self-portrait with mobile that would move in the wind. We all talked about what a self-portrait was and looked at Durer's painted self-portrait. Just to make the point clear, we also looked at the Mona Lisa and everyone understood it was not a self-portrait, but a portrait that Da Vinci had painted of someone else. A short demo of how to construct the mobile followed and the kids took it from there, deciding on their own whether and how to make arms and legs.

We finished in time to clean up and pose with artists and self-portraits:

Thanks to all the artists who helped to make this a perfectly creative day!