First Grade Rousseau Jungles

 First grade looked at a variety of prints by Henri Rousseau. They focused on how the animals seemed to be hidden in the foliage of the jungle.

Then we read the book, Who's the Beast by Keith Baker.

I put out a variety of old calendar pages with animals on them and asked them to practice drawing just the head of the animal. We talked about making the drawing bigger than our hand, so that it would fill up the space.

Once they had the head drawn, I showed them how to draw different plants to make it look like their animal was hiding in the jungle. The plants had to touch the edge of the paper, as well as touch the head of the animal. I also showed them how to draw plants all around the page (top, bottom, and both sides).

 When they had their drawing the way they wanted it, I showed them the 3 choices that they would have for their project:
1.  black glue with liquid watercolor
2.  muslin, glue and liquid watercolor
3.  marker

Black glue with liquid watercolor
I gave the students a piece of watercolor paper (9x12). They drew their jungle scene with pencil first.

Then they traced all of the lines with black glue (school glue mixed with black acrylic paint).

Once the glue was dry, I put out trays of liquid watercolor. We started with the plants first, so I gave them a 3-4 different shades of green to use. The black glue helped stop the paint from bleeding.

We then moved on to our animals. I told them that since they were the artist, they did not have to paint their animal using realistic colors. If they wanted a pink giraffe, they could make a pink giraffe.


The last step was painting the background (all of the space that was left over). My one qualification for this was that I didn't want them to use a color that had been previously used.

 Muslin, glue and liquid watercolor
For this project, I had pre-cut the muslin into 9x12 pieces.

The students used a pencil to draw their picture onto the muslin first.

Then they traced over the lines with white school glue.

When the glue was dry, they used the same watercolor procedure as the black glue project.

Once the entire project was dry, the glue was peeled off of the muslin.

***This is where we had technical difficulties. The glue was very difficult to peel. I ended up having to peel the majority of it. I tried washing the muslin under water to loosen the glue, but that DID NOT WORK! The glue got very sticky and all of the color washed out of the muslin. Ugh!!

Any suggestions on how to fix this?????????


















Marker
I gave the students a 9x12 piece of drawing paper. Again, they drew their image with pencil first.

They traced over the pencil with black marker and used an eraser to erase the stray pencil lines.

In my room, I have all of my markers sorted into stackable plastic tubs by color, so for this part, I pulled out the green marker tub. They used any other the green markers that they wanted to color their plants.


 The animals were colored with any colors that the children wanted.

The sky was filled in with a color that they had not previously used.

Overall, I was very pleased with how these turned out. The students did a really good job overlapping their plants and animal and we are finally getting the concept of drawing big!

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Second Grade Amate Bark Painting

To continue our study of Latin America, second grade began a project based on the Amate Bark Paintings of Mexico. I started the project by showing them this video I found on YouTube.


Then I gave each student a piece of Kraft paper and had them crumple it up and smooth it out 10 times. I had them repeat this 10 times, because the longer they crumpled their paper, the softer and more pliable it became.

They painted the Kraft paper with watered down brown tempera paint, giving it a quick coating- I didn't want the entire paper covered in brown paint, but wanted to give it the look of the bark paper.

The students then began planning out their compositions. I had them draw an animal that could be found in the jungle. They had to practice drawing it bigger than their hand (very difficult for some!) and they had to embellish some aspect of their animal (make it fancy!). They gave their birds curly feathers, long toes on their lizards, crazy manes on their lions, etc. Once they had their animal, they had to have at least 5 pieces of foliage in their jungle. Each piece had to be touching their animal and the side of the paper.

Once they had their picture ready in their sketchbook, they were ready to draw onto their Kraft paper. I had them draw with pencil first and then trace over the drawing with a black marker.

I gave each table a tray of fluorescent tempera paint (no green yet). They were allowed to paint their animal any color they chose- the wilder the better!

When the animals were finished, I gave them a couple of different greens and some white. I showed them how they could mix the colors together to get different tints of green and explained that I didn't want any of their plants to be the same green as any other. They all had to be different.

Once the entire project was dry, they used the smallest brushes I had available and embellished their pictures. Some just added a little bit of white, others added patterns.

The last step was to go over the black marker one more time and retrace it.

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Second Grade Rousseau's Jungle

 This project was a pretty simple one, but the end effects were very nice.

I started the project by reading the book, Who Is the Beast? by Keith Baker. The illustrations in the book were great for showing the students overlapping- which was what I wanted to focus on in this project.

Before I started reading, I gave the students 3 things to look for in the book:
1)   animals
2)   colors used in the plants
3)   shapes used in the plants and animals

After I finished reading, we brainstormed a list of animals that could be found in the jungle. The students then chose 2 animals and practiced drawing them in their sketchbooks (I have a milk

 crate filled with old calendar pictures that I have collected. I pulled all of the jungle animals and the students used these as their reference materials).

When they had finished their sketches, they chose the 1 animal that they liked the most and drew this on a piece of watercolor paper. The rules for this were:
1) touch at least 2 sides of the paper (to make sure that it was large enough)

2) use a whisper pencil (draw lightly, so that you can erase)








 After they drew their animal, I then showed them how to draw the vegetation. We talked about how Rousseau hid his animals in the plants, so we would have to draw our plants from the side of the paper towards the center, so that they would cover part of our animal. Anything that was covering our animal, we would then erase (thus the reason for using a whisper pencil).

Rules for this step:
1)   plants had to touch the animal

2)   had to have plants coming from the top, bottom and both sides of the page

I also told them that they didn't have to draw just leaves. I showed them pictures of different flowers that they could use, also.

 When they had finished their drawing, they used black marker to trace the entire picture and then colored in their animal and plants. I had bought every kind of Crayola marker imaginable (Bold, Tropical, Standard) so that they would have a variety of colors to choose from. They were asked to try and use each green only 1 time, so that they would have variety in their jungle.

 For the background, we used liquid watercolor to create a wash. I gave each child a cup with watered down blue watercolors and they painted in any areas that had not been colored with markers.

I love the contrast between the markers and the watercolor!

This last piece (the zebra) was voted as Artist of the Week on Artsonia (http://www.artsonia.com/). She won a $50 gift certificate to Dick Blick and a plaque with her name and a picture of her artwork on it!

She was thrilled. I sat with her and helped her order her art supplies- it was like Christmas morning when the box arrived! Markers, sketchbooks, oil pastels, glitter! Every child's dream! Pin It