6/7/8 Watercolor Paintings

The middle school students began a unit on water color painting by watching a short tutorial on the internet and then experimenting with paint on wet and dry paper, mixing colors together, and adding details to wet and dry surfaces. Local water color painter and Parker Admission Director, Laura Mandelson, came into class to show the students some of her work and to talk about how to achieve different results with this medium. Then the students each figured out a composition of particular interest to them, sketched out the scene and painted it using many of the newly acquired techniques.

Early experimenting

Working oncolor mixing and texture

Laying in some first colors

A turbulant sky

Laura discussing her work with the class

Painting the sky behind an eagle

Flowers from a still-life

K/1s Paint Hot Chocolate Pictures

With an abrupt change in the weather and frigid temperatures outside, the mood seemed right for some steamy hot chocolate pictures. After figuring out the shapes needed to make a cup look 3-D, the students drew customized steaming cups brimming with hot chocolate and marshmallows.

A striped background

A hefty handle

Getting the blue in just the right place

Gluing on some "steam"

And marshmallows

2/3s Draw Toucans in Rousseau-like Jungles

Toucans are highly colorful birds with very distinctive bills.  They inhabit rainforests with very distinct vegetation. With a look at the paintings of French artist Henri Rousseau, and his jungle pictures, the 2/3s figured out how to draw this bird with its large brightly colored beak and feathers.

Getting the form of the bird

Adding the jungle

Emphasizing lines with Sharpie

The watercolor wash adds to the jungle mood

A cooler pale green background

Two finished pictures

K/1s Look at Paul Klee's "Cat and Bird" Painting

The K/1s had a brief encounter with a painting , "Cat and Bird" by the Swiss artist Paul Klee. They looked at his work and discussed how it related to their recent renditions of animals and birds, where they broke the forms into basic shapes to make them more accessible. Klee's painting uses simple shapes to whimsically represent the cat and bird forms, and the students made their own versions of his well-known work. 

After the basic form is done, Sharpie adds emphasis

Concentration

Finished picture

One more!

2/3s Create a Book About the Hudson River

The 2/3 students are each researching a specific topic as they investigate the life and history of the Hudson River. They will be using their "eyes of a scientist" in art class as they do careful observational drawings of the specific fish or flora they have chosen to study. These will be added to a painted background page which will include their research on their chosen topic as well as a poem. The individual pages will then be assembled into a class book on the Hudson River.

Drafting the blue crab

A water snake emerging

An alum came back to help with the book project

Working on accurate colors

Three finished pages

K/1s Study Native Birds and Animal

Working from photographs of the bird or animal that each student is studying in class, the K/1s will apply their observational skills and their newly acquired ability to see how complicated shapes can be seen more simply as basic ovals, circles and such, as they draw pictures and then create collages of the creature they are researching in the classroom.

Observing shapes in a photo while sketching a deer

Feathers on a red tailed hawk

Spots on the back of a frog

Painting water over the colored pencil around a cloud

Finishing touches on the water under this sizable frog

Beginning to collage a tree with an owl

Tearing paper for the red fox

Raccoon in collage and drawing

                                               A chipmunk, a duck and a deer all in drawing and collage

Middle School Learns About Ming Vases

With two Chinese students in our middle school this year, it seemed like the ideal time to all learn something about Chinese Ming vases. These vases date back to the Ming dynasty, 1368,  and are characteristically made of white porcelain with cobalt blue decoration. The shapes were quite specific, generally having a narrow neck and designs featuring fish, birds, floral motifs, vines and iconography. Using oil pastels covered with white acrylic paint, the students tried their hand at demonstrating their understanding of this art form by scratching designs into their rendition of large vase shapes that were then cut out and mounted on black paper.

Creating a stencil for the initial vase shape

Filling in with blue oil pastel

Tracing the stencil onto final paper

Beginning to scratch in the images

Blue images are beginning to emerge

Lettering the name in Chinese characters

                                                             Three finished works