6th Grade Abstract Landscapes

This year, the sixth grade learned about Wassily Kandinsky's landscape paintings. Kandinsky was a Russian Abstract Expressionist painter. We looked at examples of his work (below) and spent multiple class periods debating the artist's intentions.

 

For this painting, students debated whether Kandinsky was trying to paint an inviting landscape or a scary one. Students had to explain why they thought it was scary/inviting. The question I posed was, "Do you want to visit this house? Why or why not?"

 

For this painting, students debated weather the landscape has a stream or a road, and whether the composition is inviting (and why). They really got into this one. Pretty heated arguments!

 

And below you can find the students' abstract landscape paintings. Students were only provided with primary colors and black and white. I think they did a great job of blending, color mixing, and showing a range of values!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FYI this is a man holding onto to a cup and a bowl to prevent himself from being sucked out into the universe. Yes, you read that correctly.

 

 

Cool paper-towel texture technique!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Sampling of Awesome GIFs

Below you can find a few impressive GIFs made by the high school Visual Art and Technology class. Some of these GIFs were simply experiments -- an effort to get students familiar with the process. Others were for their midterm.

Their midterm project was two-fold: they had to create a work of art in a medium of their choice. While they were making their art, they were to document its creation with photographs. These photographs turned into a GIF (in essence, a digital flipbook). Thus, they had two works of art for their midterm: their actual art, and their GIF.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Collaboration GIFs: I'm the Best Artist in the Ocean

The high school Visual Art and Technology class recently teamed up with a second grade art class to create the below masterpieces. The second graders read I'm the Best Artist in the Ocean, by Kevin Sherry, and painted the below squids as a visual response. My class animated them!

Tomorrow we are Skyping with the little ones so we can talk about our respective experiences!

 

By Jordan and Glenn

 

 

 

By Lillian and Eva

 

By John and Noah

 

By Miles and Max

 

By Mrs. T and Sarah

 

By Neal and Cassandra

 

By Rachel and Mackenzie

 

 

By Tyler and Jillian

 

By Violet and Alysia

 

 

 By John and Erick

 

 

By Adrianna and Nate

 

 

By Tom and Sara

 



Fruit Monoprints

The sixth grade worked on monoprinting pictures of fruit. We first talked about how mono (monotone, monorail, monocle) means one. Usually, printmaking yields many prints (because you have a plate, from which you can print many images), but with monoprinting, it's a one-time deal. Only one print, then you start over. Also, to be successful, students had to work fast so that the paint wouldn't dry. It was a challenge for some of the more detail-oriented students!

Here's what we ended up with:

From left to right, these three avocados represent a student's first, second, and third try. Look how much better he got in just ten minutes! Amazing!

Another beautiful avocado.

 

Pear and banana.

 

 

Pineapple.

 

A (very) red apple.

Red pepper.

 

Wonderful watermelon.

 

This pictures shows the process. We painted on old transparency sheets, then pressed paper onto our painting, thereby printing the image.