Friday, November 11, 2011

Views of Mt. Fuji - art of Japan, project #1



Dolvin second graders have beautifully completed project 1 of our Japanese art unit.  We studied "the man who painted a mountain," Katsushika Hokusai.  Orphaned as a young boy, Hokusai grew into an artist who fulfilled his childhood dream of creating many views of the "magic mountain," which he could see from his tiny childhood village.
After studying Hokusai's art as well as photos of Mt. Fuji, students drew a variety of sketches with the mountain near or far, from land or sea, in the day or night, and in different types of weather. We selected our favorite sketch and enlarged it with construction paper crayons, then painted sakura, or cherry blossoms, surrounding the mountain, sometimes blowing in the breeze.We finished off the project with a traditional Japanese haiku. 

Our space for artful thinking on "The Great Wave", finding Japan on the globe, and reading about Hokusai.

A great book... the kids loved learning to say "Katsushika Hokusai" - sounds like a song!

Examples of near and far in the landscape
Haiku example written by me, with a little syllable-counting help from the kids
- it should be 5-7-5 syllable count, and as you can see we have one too many in the first line - oops!












2 comments:

  1. Beautiful artwork from your students.
    The lines are elegant and expressive.
    I love the textures and colors.

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  2. Every project is fabulous! We do Japanese projects all year so I may copy a couple of yours! Thanks for this wonderful blog.

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