Northern Lights monoprints, 2nd grade

Second graders enjoyed making Northern Lights monoprints with Arctic animals - we drew a simple icy landscape with black Sharpie and white crayon, then colored a plastic transparency with Crayola markers. Spritz the plastic with a mist of water and print on the paper - you can feel the reflection of the sky on the ice, so beautiful!

2nd grade Matisse unit:collage and painting

Second graders explored the art of French artist Henri Matisse and created a painting and a collage using his style. Our collages focused on shapes as in his vegetable and ocean collages – we began with geometric shapes and layered organic shapes on top. His style is very loose and abstract, so we remembered what we had learned from our book Ish about making “Ish- art”.

 Our paintings focused on an interior of a room with a window view. Students mix their own colors from primary colors and created tints with white. We enjoyed the freedom of painting without drawing first - very expressive.

Tiger symmetry print

Asian art is a subject we explore each year in second grade - this year we started with one of the world's most beautiful and amazing creatures - the tiger! Several types of tigers live in Asia and many artists from this region show the beauty of the animal in their art. Here are some of the examples we viewed, and an illustration of the symmetrical nature of the tiger's face.

The symmetry lends itself well to a special type of monoprint, or single print, called symmetry printing - the artist paints on half the paper, and folds the other half over and rubs the top to transfer the paint, creating a mirror image.  Because the tempera dries quickly on the construction paper, we used a quick rhythm of painting just a few strokes and then printing - “paint a little, print a little.” The students followed me in a guided drawing of half the tiger face, as seen above, and then we began painting the white areas. The next session we added orange and black - some asked to paint the eyes green if we had time. I love the way each tiger has a unique face and expression!

Super Powers

Our school theme this year is Superheroes - #DolvINcredible. For our first art lesson, my 1st and 2nd graders illustrated their own special abilities using a comic style drawing with a “super signal.” We reviewed shapes and the correct way to use our drawing tools. Fill the space!

2nd grade stitchery: constellations

My second graders learn about space in their classroom, so when it came time to do some sewing in the art room, we used constellations as our theme. We found our zodiac constellation on a chart and traced the shape onto a piece of paper mesh made by Roylco, adding some tape around the edges to prevent the mesh from unraveling.

Next we learned how to tie a knot and thread our yarn needles using a paper threader and went to town! We finished surprisingly quickly, so next time I think we may make them a little larger - for these I used half-sheets of the paper mesh. We colored the backgrounds and for a finishing touch, we glued some sequins in the background to give it that outer space feel.

Tiger symmetry prints in 2nd grade

Asian art is a subject we explore each year in second grade - this year we started with one of the world's most beautiful and amazing creatures - the tiger! Several types of tigers live in Asia and many artists from this region show the beauty of the animal in their art. Here are some of the examples we viewed, and an illustration of the symmetrical nature of the tiger's face.

          

The symmetry lends itself well to a special type of monoprint, or single print, called symmetry printing - the artist paints on half the paper, and folds the other half over and rubs the top to transfer the paint, creating a mirror image.  Because the tempera dries quickly on the construction paper, we used a quick rhythm of painting just a few strokes and then printing - “paint a little, print a little.” The students followed me in a guided drawing of half the tiger face, as seen above, and then we began painting with orange, white and black. I love the way each tiger has a unique face and expression!

     

"Art & Life" Self-portraits, 2nd grade

I am really excited about the final products my 2nd graders are completing this week - we are making self-portraits using a combo of coloring (Crayola twistables) and painting (Crayola pan watercolor) and lots of personal imagery. We looked at some of Frida Kahlo's art and discussed the way she and many other artists share their life experiences in their art, often using symbols. Earlier in the year we filled out an Art Starters idea sheet to refer to when we wanted to personalize our work - it is a list of topics that tell about our favorite things, ideas, and experiences, and we used many of these things to illustrate the negative space of our self-portraits. As we begin uploading these to Artsonia, we are learning more about writing an artist statement using prompt questions and reflecting on what we learned.