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Roy Lichtenstein Pop Art
The fourth graders have been studying the Pop art movement in art class. They learned that Pop Art was a movement during the 1950's where the subject matter was people or things from popular mass culture. They viewed slides of Roy Lichtenstein's paintings where he zoomed in on comic strips and used onomotopoeias, words that describe sounds. The artist was most known for thick outlines, bold flat colors, and his use of Benday dots to represent certain colors. The fourth graders then immidated his style by drawing their own zoomed in comic strip. They used markers to color in and printed dots in the background using tempera paint!
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Reptile Relief
In art, the fourth graders have been hard at work creating a really cool project. They have been studying the difference between abstract art and non objective art by studying Wassily Kandinsky's art work. They learned that abstract art is a style of art that shows objects, people, and/or places in simplified arrangements of shape, line, texture, and color. Non objective art is art that just uses the elements of art and principals of design to create an interesting composition, but is not trying to represent something in particular. They then used white tempera paint and pastels to create a non objective background and an abstracted creature. They used an analogous color scheme, three to five colors next to each other on the color wheel, to create harmony throughout their work of art, and chose to put their reptile in relief, the raised parts of a surface which are often noticeable by the feeling of texture, to show contrast.
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MATISSE PAPER CUTOUTS
The fourth graders have been studying the French artist Henri Matisse in art class. They learned that towards the end of Matisse's life he became very ill. Even though he was bedridden, he began a new direction with his art which he called "painting with scissors." No artist had taken this process, called collage, to this extreme of description and refinement. This project utilizes bright papers, scissors, glue, and an added third dimension; the fourth graders used three layers of cardboard to build their collages on, to bring this collage to life in the style of Matisse's paper cutouts. It also addresses six elements of art and principals of design: shape, color, space, contrast, balance, and movement.
