Autumn tree collages

First graders did texture rubbing with black chunk crayons on cut up craft paper. 

Then we made trees (a la the strategy I have used for other projects see here and here).

I like using this strategy with kinder and first grade because it really makes a difference when they go to draw trees and they feel comfortable adding on branches rather than resorting to "lollipop trees".

Going on, 

The next class we took a look at Amate Barkcloth Painting. 

The kids drew birds, nest, and brightly colored eggs using colored pencil on scraps of craft paper, cut them out and glued them on to the trees. 

*They are a little hard to spot on the pictures, I"ll take a few details more tomorrow. 

*The color came out kind of funky on a few of these photos for some reason, I apologize.

 Lastly, using long cotton swabs (one of my favorite items ever!, especially for plates of elmers glue)

we dotted on yellow, orange, and red tempera for the leaves. 

They have been added to my autumn leaf color wheel bulletin board. 

 This idea was actually my principal's! I took it and ran with it and it is really cool!

Kids can bring in leaves and pin them up.

Autumn leaves, stencils, and color study

I challenged my second graders to draw oak and maple leaves rather than simpler types of leaves- because I knew they could. :)

They complained and there were some tears- and some discussions about how things from nature have 'weird' shapes that will never right- but in the end they did an awesome job!

We turned their leaves into stencils to use for their final product. 

Then we moved on to foreground and background. 

THEN we moved on to analogous colors. 

(if you want more info on one of my analogous color teaching strategies click here,

if you want to see more of my past leaf and autumn color lessons click on the labels to the right)

 The two analogous color groupings we used were yellow/yellow-green/green and yellow/yellow-orange/orange. 

The leaves we sprinkled salt on for a little added effect. 

For the follow up to this lesson to drive in the analagous color study we are drawing grapevines

and painting with red-violet, violet, blue-violet. 

They aren't done yet but here it is in-progress:

Magnified Insects

1. Magnifying Glasses--- made from 6" paper plates, painted with the sparkly prang watercolors as an extra treat for the kids. 

2. Paint the dirt and grass! --- paint spots of brown watercolor paint, paint the remaining white space with green water color, then stamp with mat board scraps in green tempera. 

3. Insect Study-- students drew 1 large ladybug and 3 or more small ladybugs. 

4. I hot glued the magnifying glasses above the big ladybugs to show how they work. 

Students who had extra time added on a grasshopper. 

Lastly we made a hand and arm (one of my first grader's ideas!! so great!).

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. 

Kinder Observational Leaf Drawings

Kindergarten is studying the concept of size in their regular classes. 

For this lesson students painted with warm color watercolors and we added a little salt. 

The students learned about the concept of "observational" drawing and how to look at the an item closely to identify the shapes and details. 

They needed to draw a Small/Medium/Large leaf and if they had extra time and extra-small or extra-large. The borders were collaged with an extra painting we did 

and q-tips dipped in metallic copper paint. 

Simple but I thought they did a nice job!

Pop Art Leaves

This was a lesson I did with second graders two years ago that I wanted to share because it was a big hit.
The project had two parts.  The first part was a color mixing study and investigation into analogous colors.
The students chose a set of analogous colors that represented fall foliage colors.  We talked about how analogous colors are three "neighbor" colors on the color wheel and sometimes use the rhyme "three colors in a row, just like winning tic tac tow".  The students printed large dots using corks dipped in tempera paint.

We studied the work of Roy Lichtenstein (which is why we included the dot patterning) and Andy Warhol and discussed what the phrase "Pop Art" means.

The other part of the project was based on observational drawing.  The students observed the leaves, and drew in pencil and then traced in black pen.  They had to cut the contour of the leaf carefully and create a composition with their background when they glue-stick'ed them on.

Leaves!

These projects focused on observational and contour drawing.  All of the classes did a number of practice drawings first.
The other focus was analogous colors.  I love teaching about analogous colors in the fall because the fall leaf colors are great examples.  The students painted washes of analogous fall color combinations and learned about tertiary colors (yellow-green, yellow-orange, etc).  They did their final drawings over the dry painted papers and traced in pen or thin sharpie.  The students added color to the leaves with colored pencils as the final touch.
I also had access to leaf texture tiles that they could use for rubbings.  The students added on another element to their pictures by rubbing the tiles with black chunk crayons consciously rather than randomly.

These pictures are a slight variation I did with the third graders.  They also focused on overlapping.  

Examples from this year's variation of analogous painted leaves and observational drawing. 

We focused on making 'super large' leaves this time around.