harvest moon and spooky trees

Sometimes I get inspiration for art lessons from random pictures, and that's how this one happened. One day my Facebook feed presented a photo of a tree silhouetted against a huge moon and this art lesson immediately formed itself in my mind:  tissue paper collage moon + spooky tree. I could see the end result in my brain, and backtracked through that image to develop the lesson for a second grade classroom.

At first, I thought it would be a fine idea to have the students create the circle using a compass, but no compasses were to be found so I opted for a hand-drawn circle, which turned out to be a huge benefit!  The circle was filled with tissue paper collage, and while that dried, we made the trees -- basically a line drawing outlined with another continuous line, cut on the outside line, and flipped over.

My suggestions to the kids:
Don't put the moon in the exact center of the page.
Don't put the tree in the exact center of the moon.

Some of the kids had a little trouble cutting out the tree shape, especially if they had crossed branches, so I helped by showing them how to cut into a closed shape. For a "first time" try, I think these turned out great! I wrote up the lesson and had a few other teachers try it out, and it was a hit with everyone!

It's a great art lesson for teaching how to use space, talking about the use of warm and cool colors, and working with interesting lines. It was fun, easy, a little messy, and generally pretty successful. And it's perfect for October! Just spooky enough to be "Halloween-y" without all the Halloween hype. This lesson, with step-by-step directions, is available in my TeachersPayTeachers store. Look for Harvest Moon Tree Silhouette!

drawing on halloween

One day while looking through some images looking for something (I don't remember what), I saw a little orange and black witch profile art piece that got me to thinking. I had a subbing day scheduled the week before Halloween in a second grade class in which the students are particular adventurous, so I figured they would be a good group to try out a new lesson that would require them to use a viewfinder, make preliminary sketches, draw a large version of one of their small sketches, then crop their design, paint it, and frame it. I had visions of bold, black contour drawings with bright orange textured background, and lots of options for cropping.

It's hard to get some kids to draw something bigger than their pinkie, and I wanted them to draw large, and boldly, giving some attention to placement, scale, background, and detail. That's a lot for a second grader, but we went slowly and used pretty much the whole day for the lesson.

We started with a picture walk through the book Look! Look! Look! by Tana Hoban, then I taught them how to make a small viewfinder. I had them look at my face, move the viewfinder closer and further away, look at their own hand, and look around the room in general. This was to give them an opportunity to look at the environment the way an artist does, blocking out unneeded parts and just experimenting with placement in the viewing window.

The next step was generating a list of Halloween nouns, for them to use for ideas for drawing. This was followed by having them fold a piece of scratch paper into fourths and do four different small drawings. They chose one of these to draw bigger on a white paper, using only a black crayon, with instructions not to color anything in because these were contour drawings. I let them know that we would be painting them later.

Next, they made a cropping window and placed it over their drawing to help them choose how to crop their composition. This was kind of like using a giant viewfinder. They drew a pencil line for the cropping lines, then sponge painted inside that square with orange watercolor.

By now it was about one hour before the end of the day. There was just enough time left to cut on the pencil lines to trim the excess off their drawings and mount their "close up" compositions on black paper. And to show off.

After we had a chance to look at everyone's work, I had a few students choose someone else's picture and tell what they liked about it. They were remarkably articulate! "I like the collar." "I like the pattern in the background." "I like the spider web." "I like that it looks scary."

This turned out to be a pretty successful lesson with a lot going for it. The students were intrigued by the viewfinders, and I was thrilled to see that hardly anyone drew tiny pictures. I think making the preliminary sketches (and modeling that process) helped a lot. If I had wanted to stretch this lesson out even further, I could have had the students do all the measuring for their cropping window mats; I would definitely do that if I were teaching this to an older group. And just to show how great this class is, they put all the painting sponges back into color-coded baggies with no mistakes!

intersecting math and art

The art lessons I teach are based on the elements of design, and many incorporate math in some way, especially geometry. When I ask students to tell me what they notice in works by Wasily Kandinsky or Pablo Picasso, many of the responses include words like square, triangle, line, acute, obtuse, parallelogram, isosceles, and other math words. Any art lesson that includes the creation, manipulation, and use of different kinds of shapes and lines, whether students are drawing, painting, or making collages, is likely related to math. Here is a review of a few of my favorite art-making activities with math connections:

Geometric People

These figures are created entirely from geometric shapes (mostly rectangles). The lesson includes a discussion about joints, human body proportion, length and width, and the depiction of movement. A great introduction is to look at art by Keith Haring and to do a movement activity that requires students to arrange their bodies in different poses. For this lesson I really encourage students to create their figures to show or imply movement.

Geometric Shape Collage

This works with students of all ages, with directions that change according to the age group. Younger students are asked to use one circle, two lines, three triangles, and four colors; older students use one circle, two lines, three non-congruent triangles, four different quadrilaterals, and five colors. The finished art work can be used as a jump-off point for more math practice, with computation, calculating perimeter or area, or other math practice.

Kandinsky-Inspired Abstract Design

This is adapted from an activity in the book “Drawing With Children” by Mona Brooks. I usually have students look at a Kandinsky print and tell me what they notice. Invariably, math vocabulary bubbles up:  acute angles, triangles, parallel lines, etc. Then I have them draw one thing at a time, starting with three dots anywhere. The drawing directions use tons of math vocabulary (parallel, perpendicular, larger, smaller, etc.) They asked to color it however they choose, leaving part of the composition white. These are always successful, colorful, and interesting!

Cityscapes With Symmetry

This drawing activity connects to mathematics with its focus on symmetry, proportion, and a little work with geometric shapes. Students can be creative while applying their knowledge of symmetry. I like to use construction paper crayons on black paper, but I’ve also used regular crayons on white paper. Sometimes the skyline is glued onto a previously-created watercolor wash. This art lesson is inherently successful; even if mistakes are made in the symmetry, the end results are always beautiful.

Mondrian-Inspired Line Designs

These are all about lines and patterns created with lines. Students simply divide the paper with two horizontal and three vertical lines, creating several quadrilateral spaces, a few of which are filled with line patterns. When finished, the original lines are covered over with construction paper strips to give the whole piece a more dramatic look. Fun, easy, and relaxing!

Artists use math all the time. Sometimes this is in obvious ways with the use of lines, shapes, perspective, and proportion. Sometimes it is more subtle, such as in the use of balance and proportion in an overall composition. I often tell students they are “doing math” as well as “making art" because I want them to understand that math is a useful tool that isn't only something we do in school on a worksheet. Teachers might try incorporating math into art work, then extending the math even further through discussion of students' compositions.

All the art lessons described here... and many others... are available in my store at TeachersPayTeachers. Some are available as individual lessons and most are also available in bundles of three or four related art lessons.

And by the way..... if you think there is no time for art, take a look at Making Time For Art, which is free at my TeachersPayTeachers.com store. It has lots of ideas for integrating art across the curriculum, with math and other subjects as well, and suggestions for buying art materials and creating an art center.

Really.... art is for everyone!

chagall-inspired drawings

Here is a fun and easy drawing activity that requires practically no prep and which encourages students to get outside the box and unleash some fanciful creativity. The drawing part is done with a Sharpie or a black crayon on white drawing or construction paper.

I usually do this lesson with third or fourth grade students, and occasionally with second grade. It begins with a "looking at art" discussion of work by Marc Chagall. I always use I and the Village and another painting for this part. I have students tell me what they notice; I chart the responses that are "objective" ("I see the Eiffel Tower") and talk about the responses that are "subjective" ("It's weird.") I also ask for words that describe Chagall's work, and here again there is the objective vs. subjective issue. "Fanciful" works, while "weird" does not. "Creative" works while "pretty" does not. At some point, I introduce the words surreal and surrealist with a rudimentary definition: not realistic, but with real things.


The "art-making" part requires some listening, as students draw what they are asked to draw, one item at a time, while also occasionally reorienting their paper. For example, I usually start with directions to draw the profile of a face at the edge of the paper. I reference the green face in Chagall's I and the Village so they know what a profile is. When that's done, I ask them to turn their paper in a different direction and draw any kind of animal, but make part of the animal go "off the paper"... and again, I reference "I and the Village" and show how the horse's head is the only part of the horse that shows.

I continue to give directions for drawing, one item at a time, always turning the paper after each drawing. They are asked to draw things like a person, another person a different size, three buildings, some trees, a house, a road, mountains, a bird, another animal inside one of the drawings, a shape (circle, triangle, etc) "behind" the other drawings, etc. I generally make this up as I go along, using Chagall's work as my own reference for ideas. As I observe their drawing process, I will make suggestions to overlap drawings, watch how they use their space, to draw in the largest empty area, etc., to help them learn to use positive and negative space.

When the drawings are complex and dense, I stop (there will always be a few students whose drawings are very small no matter what I say, so their papers will have a lot of white space. Oh well) and ask them to color in most of the picture however they want, and to leave some parts white. I suggest that they do some shading, and insist that they use bright colors. Over time, I have learned to ban black, brown, and gray for this assignment. Just because. I do have them look at the colors that Chagall used, and see how bright they are.

When their compositions are complete, they are mounted on black construction paper and students write about their work using the title "My Surreal Art" .... because thinking about their own art work is just as important as talking about someone else's!

This Marc Chagall lesson is one of three art lessons included in Abstract Art For Kids, available for purchase at my TeacherPayTeachers store. The lesson bundle also includes a math-connected drawing activity inspired by Wasily Kandinsky, and a collage activity inspired by Henri Matisse.

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hands

On a day near the end of the school year, when I found myself substituting in a second grade classroom where I had never been before, for a teacher I had never met, in an emergency situation in which there were no lesson plans, the first thing I did was scout around the cupboards to see what art materials might be available. I found some white construction paper that had been cut to about 9x18, so I pulled it out, sorted through it for pieces that were not bent or torn, counted out enough sheets for the class, consulted my little folder stash of emergency ideas, and decided to have the students do some line designs with their hands.

I demonstrated on the white board what to do:  I traced my hand along with part of my arm, then drew five lines across the paper in different directions, crossing over the traced hand and extending the lines off the edges of the paper. I gave directions to color in all the spaces however they liked, and let them go to work. It was interesting to see that some students drew all their lines extending off two edges of the paper, while other students drew some of their lines stopping at other lines rather than crossing them.

These students had just had three substitute teachers in two days, so they were pretty antsy to begin with, but this activity pretty much captured everyone's interest. They didn't have to do a lot of thinking, but it did quiet them down and the results are actually pretty striking. This would be a great activity for any substitute teacher needing an hour to kill.

I could see doing this using only warm or cool colors, or warm colors in the hand spaces and cool colors in the background spaces, or patterns in the hand spaces with plain colors in the background spaces (or vice-verse), or using only three analogous colors, or different values of one color, or using watercolors, or pastels, or adding textured rubbings, or doing it with two hands, or three hands....

I'm pretty sure this is something I will do again. It was easy, fun, interesting, and needed no planning whatsoever!

flowers and landscapes inspired by georgia o'keefe

Last week of school.... subbing in a friend's third grade classroom... I want to do some art but not a real formal lesson.... so I decide to show some flowers and landscapes by American artist Georgia O'Keefe and then basically let the students choose which they want to do.

They were pretty intrigued by O'Keefe's work, which precipitated several comments. I followed up the O'Keefe examples with several close-up photos of flowers and several photos of various landscapes, then did a quick demonstration of drawing a quick, light pencil sketch of a landscape and another of a close-up flower. For the landscape, I pointed out how there were several "layers" of mountains, and that trees in the foreground would be larger than trees in the background. That was pretty much it for the lesson. I then transferred one of the sketches to *real* watercolor paper, traced over the pencil lines with crayon, then used a wet-on-wet watercolor technique, focusing on letting colors blend.

I asked students to do two preliminary sketches, one a flower and one a landscape. For these I gave them each one 12x18 sheet of drawing paper. Folded in half, it gave them two "real size" clean surfaces on which to draw the sketches. I gave each student some feedback on each drawing, then asked them to choose which one they wanted to do. Once that was decided, they got a sheet of 9x12 watercolor paper and went to work.

As they worked, I made some suggestions here and there, occasionally spraying their papers with a spritzer water bottle to make them wetter if they were not using enough water (typical for some). Since it was a very hot day (101 in the shade!) a few got spritzed on the head, too.

The whole lesson, from showing the art and photos to finished student products took about two hours. There were no behavior issues during this time, as all students were pretty much engaged right from the beginning.

The results are generally pretty good, although I learned some things which I should know by now. For one, I really need to make a hard and fast rule not to mix orange and violet, since my subtle suggestions ("You really might want to not mix the orange and the violet together") often go largely ignored. Thus, there are a few muddy results, but overall I think they would make a good display. I was happy that landscapes to flower ratio was pretty much 1:1. What was a little disconcerting was that *most* of the flowers were shaped exactly like my example sketch. Note to myself:  Do several models, not just one.

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patriotic colors collage

These "patriotic color" collages are fun and easy to do with Kindergarten through fourth grade students. The ones pictured here were done by a second grade class.

 If I have time, I begin the activity with a "looking at art" session where students tell what they notice in Alexander Calder's lithograph, Stars and Stripes Students are generally quick to notice that Calder used only red and blue, and that it reminds them of the American flag, or the 4th of July. They often notice that the piece has more red than blue, and that one of the stars has a dot in the middle of it.

The "looking at art" session is followed by the art activity itself, in which there are very few rules other than to be creative, use shapes and strips or stripes to create an interesting design, and to NOT make a flag. Some students have a hard time getting beyond the flag itself, but the addition of yellow stars helps. Each student gets a 9x12 white background, a 6x9 piece of red, and a 4x6 piece of blue, plus the yellow for the stars.

 As part of the lesson, I teach 2nd grade and older students how to make a "quirky star" by drawing a circle in the center of a yellow square, drawing five dots around the circle, then connecting the dots to the circle, in sequence (it's easier than it sounds). First graders just draw and cut out a yellow star, and Kindergartners get a pre=printed yellow star which they are asked to tear out. I never give the students pre-cut stars because I want the stars to be quirky, asymmetrical, and fanciful.

 This lesson is pretty much fool-proof; anything students come up with looks great!

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fall leaf overlay with watercolor

This simple first grade lesson can be used to introduce students to the use of watercolor with a little wax resist. It also can introduce the concept of overlapping and the use of visual movement through the placement of shapes on a page. Students choose from a variety of precut leaf-shaped templates in different sizes for their composition, trace them with a dark colored crayon, and then paint in the resulting spaces with their choice of colors.

I introduce the lesson by talking about how artists get ideas from looking around and also from looking at other peoples' art work. I then show pictures of leaf overlay watercolors by Caroline Duffield, having students look closely at the way the artist has leaf shapes overlapping each other, and how she has painted different areas different colors. I then model tracing leaf shapes with a dark colored crayon, overlapping the shapes and extending at least once beyond the edge of the paper. During the modeling, I talk about different ways to arrange the leaf shapes on the paper, and "think aloud" while I choose where to trace my shapes. I quickly demonstrate painting one or two individual resulting shapes with watercolors, showing how to hold the paintbrush -- like a pencil -- and giving directions for cleanup.

As students are working, I give help where help is needed, especially on the amount of water to use to help the paint flow easily without making a puddle on the paper, and giving advice about not painting over paint, because we are using regular white construction paper, not watercolor paper, and it has a tendency to break up with too much work. As students finish, I have them use crayons to draw and color a variety of leaves on a separate paper, using the templates for reference but not tracing this time. When everyone is finished painting, students do a gallery walk to look at everyone’s work and we talk about what they have observed about other peoples' art work.