ART at Ilchester!

1st Grade: Chinese Brush Painting!

dresart — Mon, 09 May 2011 22:43:10 +0000

In Mrs. Johnson’s Art Room, 1st Graders are learning the fine art of Chinese brush painting! We took a look at the artwork of the famous Chinese brush painter, Wang Yani (who began painting at the age of two!).

Wang Yani creating her artwork using Chinese brush painting.

Wang Yani loved to paint monkeys!

Students then practiced creating their own paintings using a Chinese bamboo brush. Students experimented with three traditional Chinese brush strokes to create things like flowers, dragonflies, bamboo, and water. These brushstrokes are: the straight hold, the 45-degree angle hold, and the horizontal hold.

Take a look at how we practiced our strokes!

Then, students created fans and decorated them using all three Chinese brush strokes they had learned. They included the Chinese character for the season featured in their fan.

Mall Show 2011!

dresart — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 17:23:14 +0000

Join us this Wednesday evening, if you can!

Click on the invitation below for details…

4th Grade: Chinese New Year Dragons

dresart — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 02:21:09 +0000

In Mrs. Johnson’s Art Room, we’ve been celebrating Chinese New Year! This year, Chinese New Year fell on February 3rd – we discussed that many people celebrate Chinese New Year here in the United States (The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore had a Chinese New Year celebration, as did Chinatown in Washington, D.C.).

After discovering the symbolism behind Chinese dragons, and the legend that they ward off evil spirits, we got to work drawing our own dragons to ring in the new year. We looked at photos of Chinese dragons and New Year’s parades for inspiration in creating our artwork.

Here are some of our drawings:

Then, we added some color! We even used metallic colored pencils and gold paint markers for finishing touches!

Lastly, we added a body and used an accordion fold so our dragons could MOVE! Our Chinese dragons are ready for a parade!

Don’t forget to click on any image to make it larger!

3rd Grade: Tints and Shades

dresart — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 23:21:19 +0000

In Mrs. Johnson’s Art Room, 3rd Graders are learning all about tints and shades in preparation for a painting project.

We learned that a tint is created when you add white to a color to make it lighter.

We learned that a shade is created when you add black to a color to make it darker.

Check back soon to see what we’ve created using tints and shades!

2nd Grade: Snowman Families!

dresart — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 15:53:44 +0000

Or should I say “snowpeople” families?? In Mr. Langevin and Mrs. Johnson’s Art Rooms, 2nd Graders have been drawing portraits of their own families… as if they were snowpeople! We even have a few snowPETS featured, too

We also took a look at the book, “Snowmen At Night” by Caralyn and Mark Buehner for inspiration in creating our scenes!

After drawing our families, we practiced turning the circular bodies of our snowpeople into spheres using paint.

Check out our wonderful snowpeople families below! (And don’t forget to click on any image to make it larger!)

5th Grade: Mexican Alebrijes IN PROGRESS

dresart — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 21:03:00 +0000

In Mrs. Johnson’s Art Room, 5th Graders have been working away at building armatures (sort of like a skeleton) for their Mexican alebrije sculptures. In the 1930s, Mexican artist Pedro Linares got very sick. While suffering from a fever, he had visions of creatures that were made up of all different animal parts… horse legs here, a dog’s head there, and decorated in all kinds of crazy colors! When he recovered from the illness, he decided to make these creatures so other people could see what he dreamt about! He called these creatures “alebrijes”. Today, many artists create alebrijes, and it has become a type of folk art.

This alebrije was created by the artist, Angelico Jimenez.

5th Graders sketched ideas for their own alebrijes, and then began constructing them in three-dimensions using newspaper and other recycled materials. I usually wait until the end of a unit to post photos, but the alebrije armatures looked so fun, I just had to post them in progress! Check back for their completed, painted sculptures in a few weeks!

Want to see your artwork in a MUSEUM?

dresart — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 20:10:26 +0000

Well you can! Have you heard of the website Dumpr.net? Yeah, I know the name is funny. But it’s a fun website where you can upload your own artwork, and use different effects to alter it! One of these effects, called “Museumr” shows you what it would look like if your artwork was hanging in a museum! I tried it out with a few of Ilchester’s famous artists below:

Remember to click on any image to make it larger!

Another cool effect I found on the site is one called “Lomo”. This effect will make your artwork look as though it was taken by a Lomo camera, a specific type of camera that makes colors appear brighter than they actually are, and can sometimes give a fuzzy, shadowy edge to a photograph. Check it out!

Google Art Project!

dresart — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 15:48:33 +0000

Wow! Check out the Google Art Project, a wonderful site that lets you explore museums all over the world, and check out artwork from their collections UP CLOSE!

When you go to the homepage, you can click on a museum from the list on the left (The Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. is included!), and then choose to VIEW ARTWORK, or even EXPLORE THE MUSEUM.

You can ZOOM IN on any artwork to see it closer than you could probably get in person! Check out the cracks in Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night” by clicking on the picture below!

3rd Grade: CLICK! Celebrating Communities

dresart — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 19:05:04 +0000

In Mr. Langevin and Mrs. Johnson’s Art Rooms, 3rd graders discussed the meaning of community. We took a look at historic Ellicott City here in Howard County as an example of a local community. 3rd graders even got to spend some time in this community when they took a field trip to Old Ellicott City with their homeroom teachers!

To celebrate the rich history of the Old Ellicott City community, 3rd graders drew inspiration from their experiences on the field trip, as well as from photos of the town to create a three-dimensional city!

As a final step, 3rd graders took photographs of the community they created together. We discussed how the artist, Walter Wick worked with a team to create and photograph communities for his book series, “Can You See What I See?” and “I Spy”. Four of these photographs were sent to a Howard County Art Exhibition called “Click! Celebrating Communities”.

You can check out these four photographs by Ilchester students (as well as photographs by K-12 students from other Howard County schools) at the Artists’ Reception this Thursday, February 3rd from 5:00 – 7:00 pm at the Department of Education Gallery… or see them below!

2nd Grade: Can You See What I See?

dresart — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 00:58:09 +0000

In Mr. Langevin and Mrs. Johnson’s Art Rooms, 2nd Graders took a look at the work of Walter Wick, author and photographer of the children’s book series “Can You See What I See?” Then, we used painted textures and paper collage to design our own city scenes, hiding little details and pictures within our artwork for the viewer to find. Take a look at our artwork… and can you see what we saw??

(Click on any of the images to see them larger)

And here are some close-ups of our hidden details!