Tuesday, December 29, 2009

A.C.E. - Plaster Mask Portraits

This project was our magna opus or “big work” in ACE this semester.  We used plaster gauze and plaster of paris to create these 3-D portraits. 

We discussed the beauty of the human face. There is not only one kind of beautiful.  Even though there are many different colors, and sizes of facial features, and hairstyles, they are all wonderfully made.  

Some of these artworks are self-portraits, while others are in honor of people we admire.







A.C.E. - Papier-mâché Lanterns

We used colored tissue paper, wheat paste, colored wire and a balloon for this festive project.

Our lanterns are not unlike those that you might see during a Chinese New Year celebration.




A.C.E. - 3-D Collage Boxes & Scrap Paper Collages

3-D Collage Boxes

Collage is overlapping paper.  For this project, we recycled tissue boxes and cut symmetrical shapes out of construction paper.  We overlapped the paper and voila!

Scrap Paper Collages 

Not a single piece of paper was wasted in these projects.  We used the shapes that we cut out for the 3-D collage boxes to create a second collage.  Can you tell which scraps came from which box?



A.C.E. - Cave Paintings

We heard a true story about how, not too long ago, four children in France discovered a cave full of paintings that were over 15,000 years old. 

Cave people did not have art supply stores, so they had to make their own paint.  We did too! We were scavengers and found different things outside to mix together to make our paint. Our paint is made of finely crushed dirt, grass, flowers, and leaves.

Miss Frerking turned the art room into an underground cave system, and we had to crawl under tables to paint on the inside of the dark cave walls.  These paintings have been extracted for you too see.






 

A.C.E. - Straw Blown Color Mixing

For this project, we learned about the primary and secondary colors in a fun way! 

 We dripped the primary color paint- red, blue, and yellow- on our papers and used straws to bloooooow the paint.  The paint ran together to make secondary colors- green, orange, and violet.







A.C.E. - Pebble Paintings

We used lines to create organic shapes that we painted with colored pebbles.







A.C.E. - Marble Paintings

We dunked marbles into paint and took them for a ride!



A.C.E. - Splatter Art

We learned about the artist Jackson Pollock and had fun being spontaneous with art.

We used the primary colors- red, blue, and yellow.  In some places they mix together to create secondary colors- orange, green, and violet.





5th Grade - Radial Initials

We used our initials to create this design.  They can be seen in the negative space.  In thepositive spaces, we created different values of colored pencils by applying varying pressures.

Like the sun that radiates heat from the center, our radial designs are the same all the way around from the center.

  Can you guess how we replicated the letters all the way around?  Ask a 5th grader.







5th Grade - Foil Tooled Masks

We learned about the art of mask-making from many cultures and time periods.  There are four main reasons that societies make masks.  They are used for story-telling (plays, movies, etc.), celebrations, wars, and religion. 

We planned ahead for our masks by sketching out what we wanted our masks to look like. It’s always a great idea to have a game plan. 

We used wooden tools to push and pull pieces of foil to give our masks form.  These masks are a kind of low-relief sculpture.







4th Grade - Photo Weavings

We learned about people from many cultures who use weavings for both functional anddecorative purposes.  

For our weavings to be precise, we used a ruler to measure and draw our straight lines.  We learned that there are 16 centimeters in one inch, so there are 8 centimeters in a half-inch.  

We made our weavings out of two magazine photographs.  Can you tell what each image is?







 

 

4th Grade - Symmetrical Jack-O-Lanterns

Our Jack-O-Lanterns are symmetrical.  They are exactly the same on both sides.  

We used exaggerated facial features to create many emotions.  They are happy, sad, scary, goofy, amused and just plain strange. J  

Did you know that you can make any image symmetrical by only drawing one side?  Ask a 4thgrader to show you how!







4th Grade - Straw Blown Fall Trees

We’ve created these go-with-the-flow watercolor paintings in the spirit of fall.  

We didn’t use a single paintbrush, though!  We used straws to blowwww the brown paint to make branches. Cotton swabs were used to dot on the little leaves. 

We learned about warm and cool colors.  The backgrounds of our paintings are cool and theforegrounds are warm

We also learned that when things are closer to us in a painting, they are larger and more detailed; this is called perspective.