Sixth Grade
What students have done this year:
*Students created a parody of the famous painting of Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. Students used cut outs of her head and hands to create their own version of the painting.
*Students worked on an optical illusion using circles, different types of line, and color to show movement and rhythm to trick the eye. Students are learning how to use a compass to draw their circles.
*Students created a large scale mixed media painting of a coral reef. Students viewed pictures I had taken on a snorkeling adventure in Hawaii. Keeping in mind they need to show a fore-ground, middle-ground, and background, they are making some creatures, plants, or objects large in front, medium sized towards the middle, and small towards the back of the paper to show depth. They are outlining their drawings with oil pastel as well as adding details for texture, then are painting the rest of the paper with tempera paint.
*Students created a different kind of resist (the previous project used oil pastels) using glue. Students are drawing a pumpkin scene and tracing their lines with glue. When dry, students will paint with water colors using different values of color for the pumpkins, grass, and sky. The paint will not stick to the glue, which creates the resist. Students will trace next to their glue lines with a black sharpie marker, as well as use the sharpie to trace around the shapes the different values in color have made inside the pumpkins. This will make the picture more abstract, and will show that students understand what value is.
*Students used cut paper shapes to make a still life of fruits and vegetables. They learned how to use complementary colors for shading with their oil pastels to make shapes look 3D. After cutting out their shapes, students arranged them to their liking to create their still life.
*Students finished with a pop art unit where they got to experiment with plaster. Students viewed artwork by the artist Roy Lichtenstein. Keeping his comic book style in mind, students made plaster masks to look like comic book characters, from the red dots on the face to the colorful hair. When finished the masks, students made a collage to represent what Pop Art is. They divided their paper into multiple shapes and in each shape drew something that represented Pop Art. We had a lot of logos, food/candy labels, and cartoon characters.