K-3 Swimming Pictures

To begin the year in K-3 art the students thought back to the summer and their opportunities to go swimming. They looked at pictures of people swimming, and noticed the positions of their bodies stretched out in the water. They then drew themselves swimming, colored them with oil pastels, and painted over that with a blue wash sprinkled with salt to simulate the feeling of being in moving water. A border of blue bubbly circles completed this project.

Fitting in the figure

heavy application of oil pastel

Check out the goggles

Wading in the waist deep water

Floating 

Radial Design Locker Names for 4-8

A new year brings new art to the Parker hallways. The first project for the 4th - 8th graders is something colorful and slightly mysterious or intriguing to identify their lockers. Radial name designs, symmetrical patterns emanating from the center of a square, are the theme this year. After looking at mandalas and discussing the way they are used in assorted religions and mindfulness practices the students got to work. Their papers are folded into eighths and a name is written filling one entire segment. Carbon paper is used to transfer the name from one segment to the next reversing the letters on alternate sections. The square is colored in bearing in mind the need for symmetry while expressing each child's individuality.

Designing the first segment

Fitting in the name

Adding color with symmetry in mind

Color beginning in the center

Emphasizing the circular pattern

Intense color

The pattern begins to overshadow the name

One finished work

Another finished name