4th Grade
a la’ Nieto
John Nieto is a modern, American Indian painter who works in the Fauvist style. The study of Utah animals is combined with his style. Students first choose an animal and learn to draw it. Using a Xerox image they “biggy-size” the image to larger paper paying attention to detail and the animal pose. After watching a short Neito documentary where he talks about painting for feeling, students choose their 5-color palette from regular, metallic, neon and pearlescent tempera paints.
Alt Book
When the bookstores in town are ready to dump books that they can’t even give away it presents an opportunity to make book art. In this fun “librarian’s nightmare” project 4th graders were presented with the idea of turning a book into a piece of art. “There are books that contain pictures of art and books that are illustrated with art,” I suggested as I cued up a PPT of artbooks, “but now I want you to consider the book as your blank piece of paper and turn it into art.” With that I “ordered” them to open their pre-selected used book and rip out a page (some were hesitant!) and then take a marker and draw on another. We saw art book examples and then turned them loose. A few sessions later we had art books.
Big Birds
This project began on a lark! (joke) Birds somehow came up in the curriculum discussion. I entertained the idea of doing 3 bird drawing on 18x24 using pastels and not a lot of time to encourage students to not slow their work to the point where they doubt or judge it. Each class selected a single bird and I found 3 poses for each – head shot, sitting on branch and flying. Projected on the screen we drew them in this order. The head shot was done with one color, the sitting pose with 2 and the flying one with 3. As the colors increased we decreased the time to create a little creative pressure. The kids responded quite well. For the 2nd and 3rd drawings we asked them to find a single word to describe the bird.
We then decided to biggy-size the project to a 24x36” pieces of cardstock. Each student was invited to select 1 of 10 images of their class bird. They drew it then painted. Half the class was set up in the hall with blank paper hanging on the wall. The kids kept working as the K-2 classes walked past on their way to lunch….fun! Those who chose Raven were asked to write their own text or poem after hearing some sample poems.
Mussorgsky
These images are the result of a collaboration with music teacher Jolene Porter (now in SLC) and myself. She was teaching composition linked to music history and felt we could tackle Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. His famous composition was written in response to viewing his friend Viktor Hartmann’s art exhibit. To make the connection with music I viewed Hartmann’s work and selected a dark scene lit by candlelight to serve as our example. This was an opportunity to learn and practice our skills at working with shades (adding black) in paint. Each child was asked to draw a simple scene that was NOT lit by the sun. After practicing making shades they painted their piece. Back in the music room they referenced their painting as they composed a short opening musical phrase similar to Mussorgsky’s opening fanfare. They wrote it and learned to play it on recorder. The only part that we didn’t manage to add was to record them playing their own opening and matching it to their art.
Printing
The printing process requires teamwork and therefore it’s something I like to introduce with 4th graders as they are old enough to handle making the printing plate and performing the print process. Image subjects range from curriculum driven ideas like animals to more open-ended simple ideas like an ice cream cone. I find the biggest challenge is getting kids to draw large enough with pencil marks wide enough apart to accommodate either glue-line printing or linoleum. Once that’s accomplished the making of the plate only takes time.
When it comes to printing I first demonstrate all 3 jobs for the 3-person teams. The artist chooses the color(s), applies them and the paper. The assistant helps center the print paper over the plate and keeps the print area supplied with clean newspaper. The print runner takes the printed image to the hall and tacks it up to dry while the artist makes another print. The challenge to all is that the more efficiently you work together the more prints you can make.
