April 2015 Art Blog

Thank you to all of you who came to visit "The Bacich Box Show" on April 9. The show was a huge success! Thank you to our 1st-4th grade art docents for an amazing job informing our guests, and representing your grade levels. 

During the month of April the Kindergarten through 4th grade students have worked on the following art projects:

Kindergarten:    Oil Pastel Flower Vase Still-Life

There are crayons... and then there are pastels! In this project, the students were introduced to the photorealist Ben Schonzeit. Students practiced flower drawing techniques. While depicting the flowers and vases on a large scale, the students also picked up basic oil pastel skills - learning how to blend by layering the intense, mixable pastel colors, shading to achieve light and dark,and using their fingers as a tool. A layered, three-dimensional effect was also achieved with the addition of hand made paper petals.

Oil pastels were created in 1920 in Japan as a means of introducing Western art education to children. While not a fine arts medium when it was first produced, it was an immediate commercial success and soon after, artists such as Picasso began using oil pastels as a recognized art medium.

1st GRADE:               Royal Self Portrait

In connection with the first grade core Language Arts “Fairy Tale” studies, students sketched a life sized “Royal Self-Portrait”. Students were encouraged to use their imagination and visualize what it would be like if they were “King, Queen or Knight.” Students painted the large self portraits with tempera paints, watercolors and oil pastels. To make the “royal look” perfect the artists applied gold and silver metallic paints onto the King’s and Queen’s crowns, and the Knight's armor. 

2nd GRADE:          Spring Chickens

The spring chicken art project correlates with the second grade social studies “Farm Unit,” as well as with Mrs. Libby’s upbringing on a farm in Switzerland. Students learned to use geometric shapes to sketch hens, roosters and little chicks. Students had a choice to enlarge a hen or a rooster onto a 9”x12” paper. In order to create a “feather like texture”, students used white paint and different colored tissue paper to turn their drawings into a barnyard regular.

3rd  GRADE:          Basket Weaving

The basket weaving projects connects with the 3rd grade Native American studies. California Natives wove baskets to gather, process, cook and eat acorns. The Acorns were the most important food source from the oak trees, which used to grow all over California. Students were introduced to the two most basic basket-weaving techniques: 1. Twined and plaited basketry, 2. coiled basketry. 

Students used flat reeds to plate and weave the bases of their baskets. Using round reeds and raffia, students practiced to twine to weave the wall structure of their baskets. Students added color and texture accents with bead work. To complete their baskets students explored different rim finishes. 

4th GRADE:           Australian Aboriginal Bark Painting

4th grade students studied Australian Aboriginal Bark Art. Students explored the unique art of Australia’s Aborigines from prehistoric cave art to the paintings of the contemporary artists. Students learned that the Aborigines use art as a way to communicate and a way to tell stories, known as "dreamings."  Students were introduced to symbols used in Aboriginal bark paintings and used some of those symbols in their own artwork. Students used tempera paint and soft pastels on brown paper to create contemporary bark paintings based on the Aboriginal "dreamings" and in the style of the cave artists and aboriginal people.