Send in The Clowns

The first grade classes have been studying the artist George Rouault in art class. He was a French artist who loved to use bold black outlines in his paintings. One of his favorite things to paint was performers from the circus. The first graders made their own clown painting using watercolors and crayon. They outlined their clown drawing in black crayon and painted their clowns using a dry brush technique of watercolors.

Wet into Wet Landscapes

In first grade, we have been studying landscapes. When the subject matter in a work of art is inland natural scenery, it is called a landscape. They learned that the line where the earth touches the sky is called the horizon line. As a class we discussed how the area closest to us is called the foreground and the area behind the horizon line is called the background. To show depth, artist make objects in the foreground appear larger. They used the wet into wet watercolor technique to create these wonderful paintings!

Georgia O'Keefe Abstract Flowers

The first graders have been studying Georgia O'Keefe in art class. She was an American painter who wanted people to see flowers the way she saw them, from a "bee's eye view." From this view, O'Keefe's flowers appear abstract. Artists often "abstract" objects by changing, simplifying, or exaggerating what they see. The first graders abstracted their flowers by drawing them from the same zoomed in view. They went over their drawings with glue and colored in the flowers with pastels.