Hot Chocolate Paintings

Yes, I have been a bad blogger. Sorry for not posting for a couple of months - I needed a bit of a break. I am now back with a vengeance and have a huge backlog of art work to post about so stay tuned! The school year has finished and I have a nice long summer holiday in front of me. However, I'm going to begin with a post for my followers on the opposite side of the world. 

These hot chocolate (or hot cocoa as some of you may call it) paintings were done by my grade 3 students earlier this year (during our Winter). The idea came from this image I found on Pinterest. Unfortunately it doesn't link back to the original source so if you know who I should thank for the idea, please let me know!

Drawing cups was actually a great way to teach about ellipses and the perspective of round objects. After painting we added a couple of collage elements - cotton wool for the steam and for marshmallows we stuck on pieces of that foam that comes with packages (the stuff that is actually made of some type of cereal).

LOVE

This is another recent Valentine's Day project I did with my grade 4 and 5 students. After viewing and discussing American Pop Artist Robert Indiana's iconic 'LOVE' sculptures and prints, students recreated their own versions. Students were given a square piece of paper which was folded to create four equal boxes to draw the letters of the word LOVE. Some used a ruler to assist their drawing. These were then painted in tempera colours of their choice and outlined in black marker.

LOVE', Robert Indiana. 1970.

photo courtesy of marissaneave.com

Pop Art Cakes

Cupcake, 2000. Wayne Thiebaud. Image via wikipedia.

This project is a slight variation on this one from Kathy Barbro at Art Projects For Kids and inspired by my colleague Linda, who made really beautiful cupcakes with her grade fours. I have also been doing a lot of Pop Art inspired work with these students and this work was particularly inspired by American artist Wayne Thiebaud (b. 1920).

I asked the students to firstly make a drawing of what their cake should look like and was impressed how literally many of them converted their designs into 3D creations.

This was the first time I'd attempted a clay project in a classroom setting with no art room tools (let's just say the carpet didn't look so good afterwards...) so I drew the line at glazing the cakes and instead we painted and varnished them.

Best of all, they are totally vegan, gluten free, sugar free and guilt free.

I love this one but it does kind of creep me out in a 'Spy vs Spy' kinda way....

Campbell's Soup Cans

Inspiration:  'Campbell's Soup Cans' , 1962 by Andy Warhol (1928 -1987).

After discussing Pop Art and Andy Warhol, I had each student in my grade 5/6 class make a life-size drawing of a can of Campbell's soup. When their drawings are grouped together I find this a really useful marking tool for grading students on their use of line, shape and space. I have done this same activity in the past with Coca-Cola cans.

Claes Oldenburg Inspired Sculptures

 
Inspiration: These are some of the sculptures made by grade 6 and 7 students from my Talented and Gifted art class last year. The students created these sculptures after learning about the art of Pop Artist Claes Oldenburg.(See below).