Santa!

These are some of the Santa portraits my 8th graders finished back in December.  We've studied portraits previously, so this project was a great way to use those skills.  We used tempera paint and practiced shading in color to get the rich red hues. I love how they each have their own personality.  I have some seriously talented 8th graders!

This one is crazy realistic, he looks so distinguished!

 I love the shading in the hat on this one.  It's as if you could touch the soft velvet!  

This one's eyes are so striking!  I love how all of them turned out!

Finished pinecone paintings!

4th and 5th grade are finishing up their amazing pinecones this week.  I'm thrilled with how these turned out.  Students did an excellent job learning to shade with color and they look so realistic.  This will definitely be a repeated project for next year!

This one is still in progress but she was doing such a great job I had to post it as well.

Parrot progress!

Oooo I'm loving how some of these are turning out!  They are practicing blending in color wheel order, using my handy dandy paintbrush color wheel I made at the beginning of the year.  (More on that later. :) 

We are also blending in our leaves, using dark and light green, along with some yellow.  This student is doing a fantastic job on her leaves.

Santa Clause suits!

I've seen this design floating around on Pinterest for several years, and this year I needed a super quick project for my 5th graders.  This one was perfect and we finished it completely in one day!  I love these!  We did a short value study with paint and practiced blending to show texture. 

More 3rd Dot Day Creatures

I posted a few of these last week so I'm following up with a few more!  I love how creative students got with this project!  I gave them just a few guidelines, discussing symmetry for their creature as well as that it should be made MOSTLY with dots.  At the end they could add a few non-dot details such as antennas and feet.  

This one reminds me of the Gru's dog in Despicable Me!  :)

She said, "it's a Koala bear with her baby!" I was impressed! 

I can't wait to display these!  They all turned out so awesome!

Dot Day Creatures in 3rd grade

Third grade is finishing up their Dot Day creatures this week!

Happy International Dot Day!

September 15-ish is here!  We have been celebrating International Dot Day by creating artwork inspired by Peter H. Reynolds' book, The Dot.  It's an inspiring story about a girl who is encouraged by her art teacher to "make a mark and see where it takes you." Each class has watched a quick 3 minute animated version of The Dot I found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=t5mGeR4AQdM as we continue work on our dot projects.  5th grade is channeling Alexander Caulder in their dot mobiles:

Lots more coming soon!