Pastel Dinos

I like for my students to be able to experiment with different art materials, or media.  One such medium is pastel.  There are oil pastels and soft pastels, and the students learn the proper way to use each of these.  They also learn different techniques for blending colors.

One project using this medium is my "Pastel Dinos" project.  The students use a black oil pastel to draw a dinosaur.  They were allowed to make up their own dinosaur, using their creativity to add any details they thought their dino should have.  They had to add a horizon line so that their dino was standing on the ground instead of floating in the middle of the paper.  Next step, adding color.

The kiddos used soft pastels to add color to their imaginary dinos.  They learned that you have to be very easy with these pastels--they are called soft pastels because they are soft.  They blended colors and used their fingers to smudge the pastel, being careful not to smudge the black oil pastel into the colorful soft pastels.

This year, I did this project with first and second grades.  Here are some first grade projects:

Kristen C.

Alli H.

Kaleb T.

Morgan K.

Addie W.

Here are some of the 2nd grade projects:

Walker M.

Charlee E.

Sarah T.

Carleigh M.

Mary-Claire W.

Unique Trees

Third grade started off the school year learning about how every artist has a unique style. Some paint things realistically, some paint abstractly. Everyone does things a little differently. When teaching an art lesson, I usually do an example project for those visual learners like me who need to see something to understand the instructions. With elementary kids, they have a tendency to want to copy what I do, but I really want to see what they can come up with on their own.

For this project, we started off by looking at how several different artists represented trees in their artwork. Each artist's trees were a little different, even though it was the same subject. The students had to draw their own unique tree, making sure not to copy mine or their neighbor's. The following are some of those unique trees.

Bailey H., JJ B.

Henry H.

Hailey M.

Sidney M.

Student Art Show

We will be having the Annual RTCA Student Art Show on Grandparents Day (April 19)! Kindergarten through 8th grade will have their work on display. Make sure to come check out how hard our little artists have been working all year!

P.S. Don't forget, April 19 is a half day!

Positive and Negative Shapes

Space is one of the Elements of Art. Now, this is not the space where the planets are--it refers to the space in a work of art, and how it's organized. There are two kinds of space: positive and negative space. Positive space is the main subject of the artwork. Negative space is the area around the subject. In a sculpture, the positive space is the sculpture, and the negative space is the air around the sculpture.

Our second graders have demonstrated their knowledge of positive and negative space with shapes. They cut a shape out of one square of paper and glued it onto another square. This is the positive space. Then, they glued their negative space to another square. Check them out!

Marleigh C., Jacob F., Kara F.

Tucker H., Ana W., Emma T.

Sophia C., Kate K., Davis S.

New Crusader Art Blog

I've decided to start a blog for our art program.  This will be a great way for RTCA families to keep up with what your students are working on.  I have plenty of posts in the works about the projects we have been working on all year.  You will have to bear with me and keep checking back to see if your student's art has made it onto the blog.  Make sure to post comments to let us know what you think.  Enjoy!

Cityscape Textures

Texture is one of the Elements of Art, things that make up almost every work of art. Texture is the way something feels when you touch it--rough, smooth, soft, sticky. Texture is everywhere.

In art, there are two different kinds of texture: real texture and visual texture. Real texture is texture that you can actually feel. Visual texture is texture that you can see, but not feel. One example of visual texture would be a rock in a painting. The rock may look like a real rock, and you may be able to see the texture of the rock, but when you touch it, it will not feel like a rock.

The first graders made a cityscape drawing and then used plastic texture plates to add visual texture to their drawings.

Here are a few student examples:

Jasley B.

Mitchell F.

Andrew H.

Luke H.

Caroline T.

Rachel T.

Watercolor Autumn Trees

One of the first projects Kindergarten did this year was their Watercolor Autumn Trees. We discussed what colors we see in Autumn, and they learned watercolor painting techniques. We painted our trees step-by-step together. They did a great job for being new at painting!

Georgia M.

Amelia H.

Ella N.

Maci W.

Hannah W.

Macy K.