Candy corn, black cats, and pumpkins oh my!

I'm a little behind on my blog posting, so I wanted to go ahead and include everything we've been working on recently into one post.  6th grade created these amazing larger-than-life candy corn paintings, 7th grade painted pumpkins from a little different perspective, and 8th grade created these creepy up close and personal cat faces!  I mixed them in with the abstract trees and our hallways are officially "dressed" for fall!  

5th grade Value pumpkins

My 5th graders are finishing up these beautiful pumpkins this week.  This lesson was fantastic for teaching value with paint.  Sometimes I feel it's a little overwhelming to learn value not only in color, but particularly in paint!  This project allowed us to break it down into one small section at a time.  We used three shades to add value to each pumpkin.  For example, on the green pumpkin, we used yellow, green, and brown.  Brown was for the shadows and yellow for the highlights.  I could have also used white, but I didn't want to give them too many colors and overwhelm them!  They are turning out great!

Art classes for adults too!

This past Saturday I had the pleasure of teaching some fantastic new "students!"  I set up a temporary studio, complete with stools, easels, and plenty of extra lighting.

Please excuse the baby, he was helping us set up that day! ;)

We also added a touch of decor here and there to make it feel artsy...

...and once the "students" arrived we dove right into painting!  

I had to take a picture of the beautiful purple shade of our water jars before they turned into yucky mud. :)

Putting in the background with purple...

I missed taking pictures of a few of the steps, but after the background we painted the pumpkin using a blend of orange, yellow, and red, then added our swirls in red while it was still wet. 

While our pumpkin dried, we created a not-so-perfect (on purpose!) pattern of black and white lines along the bottom...

Then topped it off with a whimsical stem and stitching details!  They all turned out so unique and beautiful!!

I hope to post more pictures from future classes as well!