Sakura contest?

Good morning bloggy art teachers!
So I have to admit I am intrigued and considering submitting
student work for the Sakura Cray-pa Contest. 
However, you do not get the work back.
And SERIOUSLY, I do not think I am being ridiculous in thinking this but I have looked through some of the winning and honorable mention art work from years past- and the peacock image above and the tooth image below are from the K/1/2 category and the horse is from the 3/4/5. Don't get me wrong- they are beautiful works of art! However, for real?
I think I am a great teacher I really do and I do not sell my kids short- they are doing great things and I am making waves with them and taught lots of private and semi-private lessons with some overachieving and talented students- but really? Look at the shading, color blending, and attention to detail.
My new 5th graders were having a hard enough time shading spheres this morning... this contest seems a bit skewed.
Is it worth me submitting my students work with NO RETURN... ?
Have any of you submitted work ?

 

Kinder Pattern Pumpkin Collages

This lesson was broken down into a lot of parts....

Part one: A-B Patterns
I folded 9 x 12 yellow paper into four columns.
Students drew vertical AB patterns in each column, traced them with sharpie,
and colored them with oil pastel.
Then we painted the papers with yellow, orange, & red tempera cakes.

Part two: The Vine
Students drew a vine with a leaf on manilla paper.
They painted it in with green tempera paint.



Part three: Background
I have these great leaf texture rubbing tiles-
The goal was for students to do leaf rubbings and have it look like a leaves on the ground or in a pile. Then some of them colored them with marker.

Part four: Cutting (oh my..... big mess, but worth it.)
Students traced and cut a pumpkin out of their pattern painting.
They also cut out their vine and leaf.
We glued these on to the background.

Oil Pastel Pumpkin Vines

The first part of this lesson focused on Contour lines, Positive & Negative space, 

and Organic vs. Geometric lines and shapes.  

 I introduced this piece by Lisa Congdon because I liked the use of a collaged background with the negative shapes

and also a selection of Cary Smith's prints that show great examples of simple yet interesting positive and negative compositions. 

This lesson was focused on organic lines and shapes and we used a pumpkin vine as the main subject. 

Each student drew an organic diagonal line as the vine- and then only the contour of pumpkin leaves and pumpkins. They painted them in with white tempera.

 One of my old high school students was a very active graffiti artist but also a remarkable painter and collage artist. He would always insist on painting white under anything he would paint in order to make the colors and image brighter. He was my inspiration for this base step. (Thanks Rascal) :)

 Day Two... color blending with oil pastels. We went over tertiary colors and I gave the kids yellow, orange, lime green, and grass green oil pastels. They also got a q-tip for blending and a pointy stick for scratching details.

I specifically showed them how to make the pumpkin look more round by highlighting the side with yellow first and then blending orange. I also demonstrated blending the various greens for the vine and leaves. Most of my students have never done much color blending before so they were enamored by this and also very successful. They could also scratch back into the oil pastel with the stick. 

 Unfortunately they did not translate as well to camera :( 

I love how they match up though and look so striking when they are all arranged together. 

Extra Large Acorns

This was a quick, easy, and successful lesson focused on printing, texture, & earth tones. 

Day one - draw the shape of the acorn on a 9x12 paper taking up the entire space. 

 Students painted around the outline with black tempera and then printed with cardboard strips dipped in black tempera to create the acorn top texture. 

 Day Two- introduction to Earth Tones. Students mixed different shades of brown by mixing brown, white, and orange. They painted in the top part first, using the printed lines as a guide. 

 Then most students made an attempt at color blending and mixing more shades of brown to fill in the bottom. 

 We are going to cut them out this week and hang them on the giant tree in the hallway. 

2-day Apple Still Life

My first graders looked at some of Cezanne's still life paintings with apples and looked closely at how the apples have different hues of red, yellow, and green. 

They painted three apples by mixing yellow and red tempera paint over turquoise or green paper. 

We reviewed warm colors and cool colors and examined Matisse's apple painting and how the warm colored apples and table stand out against the cool color background. 

To finish these the kids designed tablecloths with oil pastels. 

They were so into the concept of a still life that they wanted to do their own still life pictures as their extra time drawings when they finished their oil pastel. 

So today I set up still life arrangements (of containers and art supplies) for the FIRST GRADERS to draw from today and also went over the concepts of overlapping and viewpoints. They were so into it! 

 We just started them today but I had to share!