In the Art Room: Fourth Grade Fauves!

I just wrapped up a super fun and VERY COLORFUL Fauve-inspired self-portrait lesson with my fourth grade kiddos. This lesson included so many things: drawing a cartoon or caricature version of ourselves, using chalk pastel in an unusual way, creating pattern and design with oil pastel for a watercolor resist. It was mixed-media to the max with beautiful results. Here's a quickie lesson I put together just for you and your kiddos:

Lemme just say this: I DO NOT enjoy teaching self-portrait drawing to my older kids. They are so stinkin' hard on them selves that it is painful to watch. We will do a more in depth selfie drawing later this year (if time allows) but for now, this was a fun way to ease in to it. These works of art will be featured in our Artome Art Show and therefore have to be 9" X 12"...I really think this would be a great lesson on a bigger scale as the kids could achieve more detail. 

 Normally, my lesson for fourth grade and Artome is this Romero Britto one. While I love that lesson, it does take forever. Also...I have a group of kiddos this year that would just be frustrated with that lesson. I decided to create a lesson based around their interests (working big and bold!) and their attention span (I know my people, what can I say) and this proved to be it. Each kiddo was super proud and successful. 

 Day One: Each kiddo had a bingo dauber filled with slightly diluted India ink. After doing some quiet sketching for the first five minutes, we gathered and chatted about creating simple selfies on our paper. Because of the large line of the dauber and the small size of the paper, the kids learned quickly that they had to work big and without tiny details. They also were not to use pencil first but to just GO FOR IT. I only had one rule: YOU CAN MAKE AS MANY AS YOU LIKE...but if you start a selfie, even if you think it is a "mess up", you must finish it. Each kid ended up with between 3- 5 to choose from for the next class. Extras will be used in upcoming projects. 

The following art class, we started using chalk and "elephant snot" or liquid starch. I get my Sta-Flo liquid starch from Walmart. The best chalk pastels I have found are made by Faber-Castell. The colors are just so bright!

Day Two: Chalk and starch those bad boys! If they finished one, many kids asked to work on their other drawings. I was totes cool with that!

Day Three: Create a background! Using our Sargent bright oil pastels, we drew patterns all over the background of our selfies. Then we used liquid watercolor over that. Each is just as beautiful as the next! I cannot wait to see these at our art show. Will keep you posted on what the other kiddos are creating!

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In the Art Room: Romero Britto Inspired Selfies by Fourth

Hey, kids! I'm just back from a FABULOUS conference in Texas that was seriously a whirlwind of fun. I'll be certain to share that experience with you soon but before I do, I thought I'd let you in on how that Romero Britto-inspired selfie project went down. In a word(s): colorfully amazing! 

I've been sharing with you a ton of self portrait projects of late as that's what I'm sending away to be framed for our Artome art show. In case you missed, check out the Royal First Grade Self-Portraits, Second Grade Super Hero Selfies and the Third Grader's Sandra Silbertzweig Portraits. 

I wanted my fourth graders to learn how to draw a face with correct proportions but with a playful and colorful twist that reflects their personality and interests. And that's how I settled on this Romero Britto-inspired lesson. Complete video'ed lesson here: 

 By the way, I update my videos multiple times weekly...if you wanna stay up to date, subscribe here. 

The video provides a quick introduction to Britto and his work, just enough to give them a taste for how colorful and pattern-y his work is. 

The kids really respond well to learning about contemporary artists and pop art seems to be their fave. 

This project took us 3 one hour classes to complete. The students used 9" X 12" sheets of drawing paper as that is what the Artome framing format allows. On our first day, we watched the first third of the video. We drew our faces along with the video, traced over our final drawings in Sharpie (I gave the kids plenty of time to return to their seats with mirrors and alter their drawings to their liking) and used lines to break up the background. Here's what we had after day one:

The following art class, we watched the middle portion of the video where I chat about pattern. I really wanted the kids to create patterns that reflected their interests. I did provide idea sheets of simple patterns like the ones Britto uses. After 30 minutes, we watched the final portion of the video and had just enough time to explore color. Here are the results after the second day:

By the third day, we'd watched all of the video and knew what we had to do to complete our masterpiece. I really thought this would be a two-day project...but with all of the details the kids created, it lasted a pinch longer. 

 We used both colored pencils and Prismacolor Art Stix (a class favorite for their vibrancy) to color. Art Stix are like the lead of colored pencils in oil pastel from. They are richer in color than your average colored pencil. I talk about them somewhere in this clip:

Sorry, not sure when, but I know they are in this clip somewhere!

 The kids and I both were really pleased with their hard work. So often, older kids struggle with self-portraits as they want them to look "just right". Doing a self-portrait in a guided drawing format really relieved stress and insured that all selfies looked fabulous. 

You know that the 10 year old crowd can sometimes be tough to please...but this one was a crowd-pleaser. 

Even my students who sometimes struggle with fine motor skills or sticking with projects for long periods of time shined in this lesson.

You know they feel good about themselves with the "too cool for school" fourthies give you hugs at the end of art class. 

 My favorite comment: I never knew I could draw like this!

I'm shipping all of these out to Artome tomorrow and our art show is at the start of December. I'll be certain to let you know how that goes. This will be our first Artome show...I'm really excited!

Y'all know we do a HUGE end of the year art show where everything that every kid has made is hung up. I'm super stoked that for this show, I don't have to hang a thing!

I hope y'all have a fabulous week leading up to Turkey Day! I'll be in and out on this here blog with lots to share...so, during your break from stuffing runs, be sure to drop on by. 

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In the Art Room: Mini-Monochromatic Self-Portraits

Well, hello there. This big toothy grin is brought to you by our mini-monochromatic self-portrait project! Our first project of the new school year is a collaborative one. Each of my four hundred-ish students will be making a 3" square selfie to contribute to a large mural. Y'all might have seen the rainbow portrait mural that was all the rage on Pinterest a couple years ago (in case you missed, it's the same process as what I'm sharing here. When complete, the portraits are hung in Roy G. Biv order which makes for a beautiful display). The last time I did a project like this (back in 2012), we hung the pieces to create a large world map. This go-round I have something different in mind which I hope to have ready to share with y'all real soon. In the meantime, let's chat monochromatic self-portraits!

 I have my older students, third and fourth grade, for an hour. After watching the start of the video below, I allowed the students the choice of either participating in the guided drawing in the video or working on their own. My classes were pretty evenly split between those who preferred guided vs. independent. Some kids would draw along for a while until they felt comfortable then migrate to their chosen table (more on that in a sec) while others would decide they'd like a little guidance and join the kids on the floor.

Creating this video was great in that I could add vocabulary pop-ups when needed. I also think that the intro would work great with a variety of self-portrait projects. Feel free to show it in your art room, that's why I'm sharing it here! You can find many more videos like this on my YouTube channel. I add more videos weekly so if you subscribe, you can stay tuned. 

My third graders (seen above) were able to bust these bad boys out in no time. I had only one rule when coloring: only use colored pencils on the face. I learned from experience that the dark markers will often cover too much of the face and the kids lose their beautiful details. 

So, who did they know which colors to use? 

I color coded the tables! I told the kids that the table cloth signified which color was available on the table. Inside those plastic bins were markers and colored pencils of only one color. I also had mirrors and "idea sheets" (with a variety of faces and facial features) drawn on them.

So on the first days of art, the kids sat where they liked, no assigned seats. This gave me a chance to see who would migrate together and who would not be able to sit with their buddy (more talkie than workie means new seatie for sweetie). 

 AH!! First grade! Their selfies made me smile! 

 For the wee ones, we did a guided drawing activity. We spent one day learning about self-portraits and drawing them together.

I love this activity because it's such a great assessment of student skill level at the start of the year. It also is gonna make a super sweet mural that I can pop up on the walls right away. And, who doesn't love a selfie? Especially when they are this cute. 

Love to hear what y'all are doing for these first weeks back to school! 

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