Cezanne Still Lifes

In art the third graders have been studying Paul Cezanne. They learned that he was a post-impressionist painter who loved to paint still-life and landscape paintings. A still-life is an arrangement of non-living objects. The third graders then created their own still-life pictures using cut paper and oil pastel for shading. They added highlights and shadows to each object to give them form.

Picasso Portraits

The third graders have been studying Pablo Picasso in art. We discussed how Picasso was famous for his abstract portraits where he shifted the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth of his subjects around or even dared to combine two faces into one. The students then created their own Picasso inspired portraits using permanent marker and crayon. We also discussed how he used the emotive qualities of color in both his blue and rose periods. One side of their face was colored using colors that made them feel sad and the other with colors that made them feel happy.

Gustav Klimt Inspired Quilts

The third graders have been studying the principal of design pattern in art class. Patterns can be found everywhere you look, in clothes, furniture, buildings, and animals. The students studied examples of Gustav Klimt's art work and located the different patterns that he used in his compositions.  They discovered that his style of painting, called Art Nouveau, was a style that was based on stylized plant forms and the free flowing lines of nature. The students combined these characteristics and concentric shapes to fill their quilts with patterns of their own using permanent marker and metallic paint pens. The students painted in their quilts with different tints. A tint is a lighter value of a color which is created when the artist mixes the color with white. We looked at Klimt's painting "Baby" for inspiration, but the third graders choose who or what was lying in their quilts.