Sandpaper Art

What happens when you give kids sandpaper and a bucket of crayons? Mania! After showing the class a slide show of Vincent Van Gough, the kids were asked to create their version of a dream-like picture, emphasizing Van Gough's movement in Starry Night. This is what we got!!!

Abstract Portraits

Picasso's abstract portraits inspired the students to produce these portraits. With a felt-tip pen, the students drew each facial feature on a different colored paper, cut the features out, then pieced them together to form a face.

The Wild Beasts

Fauvism (Les Fauves=The Wild Beast) and Henri Matisse were the inspiration for this project. The students cut out, freehand shapes from colored paper and pasted the shapes to paper of their choice.

Impressions

Using oil pastels, the students created their own works inspired by the Impressionist Claude Monet.

Self-Portraits

With the realistic, emotional art that came out of the Renaissance period, it was exciting to see the students create self-portraits based on the bizzare works of Giuseppe Arcimboldo.

Chinese Names

When the students were studying China, they had the opportunity to write their names in Chinese on rice paper. Some kids used black markers, while others tried their skills with water colors.

Woodblock Prints

With the children reporting on China, how appropriate to introduce rice paper and woodblocking. With carving blocks of wood being unacceptable, we cheated by using foam boards to simulate the woodblock, and foam geometric shapes for the relief. The ink was replaced with black washable paint. The children were to design a pattern with the shapes and repeat the pattern over the rice paper.