Eric Carle inspired collages

6th and 7th graders worked for a while on these Eric Carle inspired collages. I would say the results of this lesson were either wonderful or disappointing with very little in between (not posting the disappointing ones). This group of kids was hit by the flu so a lot of them were out of school for quite a few classes during this lesson which really threw off the momentum of the lesson.
Regardless we got some really neat ones I want to share with you.

she got great texture in the "grass" and I love the paper she made for the puma's body
We found using a mix of tempera and cheep acrylic craft paint helped make the best textures. Adding a touch of metalic craft paint to the painted papers really added something special.

great great job getting texture into the painted paper

Great use of bubble wrap for the background texture

was out sick a lot and it shows....but he had a good start

this is great work for this student, she worked very hard on it and was very proud of it, I love the jellybean print paper she brought in for her rainbow

my photos are not doing this one justice, she did such an amazing job on all aspects of it

The sloth is HUGE, on the biggest sheet of construction paper I could find!

he used the metallic paints well

also out sick quite a lot but another great start

and my sample

In the future I will make sure to have a stockpile of pre-made painted papers for kids to pull from if they are out sick, working really slowly or just need bits of one color. This lesson dragged on a bit longer than I wanted because the kids kept making more and more painted papers.

Rhythm people

Want to talk about the ideas of rhythm, movement, unity, variety, geometric shape and color choice in a one or two class project?

Rhythm Dancers
This is not my original idea, but don't worry it is not your orginall idea either. Nor do I think it was MY 7th grade art teachers original idea (Shout out to Mr. Buddy). My guess is this one has existed in one form or another for many years. I think you could easily do the same project with animals pictures from a magazine. Especially if you get a horse magazine...although the thin legs may be hard to cut, but I digress.

Step 1: Go through magazines and tear out people in interesting positions. For the sake of time I pre-tore out a big stack of people for the kids to choose from. Fitness magazines like SHAPE! are great for this lesson. So are ski and snowboard mags. If you are working with younger students beware of enclosed shapes that they would need to cut out (like the triangle create by a hand resting on a hip). My older students tackled these enclosed shapes with exact-o knives.

Step 2: take the whole magazine page and have each student choose three colors. You could let them choose whatever they want or have to stick to a color family (warm, cool, primary, secondary....)

Step 3: Stack all three papers. Put the magizine picture on top. Paper clip on all four sides. Cut the magazine person out like he or she is a paper doll. You will cut three exact copies of that magazine photo at the same time. Set aside

Step 4: Get out the scrap box. Have the kids get three colors for the background shapes. I'm not sure if it is best to stick with the same colors used for the people or to choose something with contrast. You decided. Let me know what you think.

Step 5: From the background colors cut: 3 large squares, 3 small squares, 3 triangles and 3 rectangles (or other shapes of your choice...just make sure there are 3 of each)

Step 6: Arrange and glue the 12 shapes in an interesting way on a piece of black paper. Overlapping is our friend. Use the word composition a gazillion times till your kids know the meaning of the word.

Step 7: Glue the three people shapes onto the compositon. Make sure to use overlap and I tell my kids I want to see either diagonal or curved movement from the arrangement of the people.

Ta da! One thing to avoid, people shapes that feature only the waist up and are too big. They will block your interesting background arrangement.
click to make bigger

2nd grade owls

And for the last of the owls, 2nd grade texture owls.
A major theme in 2nd grade is texture and understanding the difference between real and visual texture. Students drew 3 large leaves on green paper and then used warm color crayons and my homemade rubbing plates to add visual texture. Then we used our little fingers and small motor skills to tear brown paper and collage it onto our owls to create real texture. Finally I caved in and got out the large google eyes.

I have focusing on building a sense of community and teach about public art by having the kids do more collaborative art this year. So we took our leaves and owls and combined them to make a fantastic owl tree. We also talked about camouflage and why owls would blend in with their environment. We pulled in the science words predator and prey while we were at it.
(click to enlarge)
I also went the extra step to put out the labels explaining what we were working on during the project.

I'm glad I took a photo though because within 48 hours my typed up explanation has been ripped down and trampled by wet, muddy feet.
even our less, ahem...gifted...kiddos made cute owls!

Way to go 2nd grade!

3rd grade owls

What can you do in two 15 min art session with a stack of scrapbook paper scraps? Make some super cute collage owls. Of all our owl projects these were the school favorite.