Terracotta Warriors

Fifth graders learned about the discovery and restoration of China's Terracotta Warriors.  Each of these 8,000 sculptures are unique.  Students designed their own unique terracotta figure and transformed it into a Styrofoam printing plate.  Students made 4 prints each, cut them out and exchanged them with others.  Students then collaged their figures on a strip of paper and the papers were displayed together to create our own terracotta army.

Still Life

5th graders created a still life by studying value and form.  Using chalks and pastels we discovered how to use these two elements to make our art more realistic.

Recycled Art

Fifth Grade students studied perspective to complete the background for their recycled art.

Recycled art

Fifth graders discussed the work of a variety of artists  who work with the same theme- using recycled materials in their art. Linda Evola-Smidt melts down guns in order to use the metal to create angels of hope, Michelle reader recycled household trash in sculptures of people, artist team Tim Noble and Sue Weber illuminate trash to create realistic images out of the shadows on the wall, and Didier Triglia uses crushed soda cans to create creative faces.
After looking at and discussing these artists we decided to make some recycled art of our own.  Students crushed their own aluminum can and used mixed media to create their own face.  For further inspiration we looked at examples of portraits from Cubism.

 Stay tuned because we will be adding more to these creations in the weeks to come!

Rotation Prints

Fifth grade discussed the importance of math and symmetry in the art of many cultures around the world, Islamic art, Celtic, African art, and rangoli designs from India.  Students designed their own symmetrical piece using graph paper, transferred it to an eraser block and used markers to stamp their design in a rotating pattern

Illuminated Letters

Fifth graders learned about Illuminated Manuscripts.  We discussed how modern day books were influenced by these older examples that were created before the printing press was even invented.  Student noted how many manuscripts included an enlarged Initial for the first word on a page.  We then designed our own Illuminated Letter.  Students built up their designs using tag board, and used permanent markers to add color

Futurism

Futurism is an artistic movement begun in Italy in 1909  to celebrate and incorporate into art the energy and dynamism of modern technology.  It focused on representing dynamic motion through the use of repetitive shapes.  Fifth graders studied this movement along with the concept of creating rhythm with repeating shapes sand lines.  We used paper figures to trace a path of motion on their paper and added force lines radiating out of the figures hands and feet.  Final touches were added by adding water to their marker lines to create watercolor effects