Grandma Moses Snowscape Art Lesson

 

I have always enjoyed the happy paintings done by Grandma Moses and it seemed like the perfect January art lesson.

I did add our bigger mountains and lake to make it more personal to where we live.

Grandma Moses' Art is a great way to introduce or reinforce Perspective and showing depth in art.

I used this video and also several images of her snowscapes to inspire my students.  We discussed what Folk Art is and also how amazing it is that she didn't start painting until later in life and became such a success.

We discussed the quote above and started with the sky, then the mountains, hills, houses etc...

I talked to them about how to make things looks closer or farther away, perspective.

They each had two pieces of paper, one for their final drawing and one to practice on.

There were a few key items I asked them to include:

Mountains or hills

Buildings

Fences

People

Trees 

They started drawing their background, mountains the then hills etc.. on their final paper.

We practiced drawing houses, small, medium and large, and where to put them in the snowscape.

The background, middle ground or foreground.

We tried different window shapes, different door shapes etc... on the practice paper.

Then they added buildings to their final drawing.

Then we did the same with trees, trees with leaves or evergreens and changing their size based on where they are in the snowscape.

We did a little practicing of drawing people and animals so they aren't stick figures on the practice paper.

Talked about what they wanted to put in their drawings - skaters, snowmen, skiers, farmers, horses, etc...

Then they added those to their final drawing.

At this point they were on their own to finish their snowscapes however they wanted.

We also discussed how to depict snow with soft lines and blue colored pencil on the white paper. 

I made sure to mention not to color the roofs of their buildings as they would be covered with snow.

Then I gave them the colored pencils to finish their drawings.

They came up with such charming and lively snowscapes!

I love them!

Double Heart Optical Illusion Art Lesson

I have seen several of these Op Art examples online, but I didn't know how to make them.  I chose this one because I want to do it with 2nd grade students and some of them seem too complex for that age group.  This one is impressive, looking like it has depth, without as much difficulty.

I'm going to introduce Jim Dine:

An American artist born in 1935 whose Heart paintings are part of the Pop Art Movement.

Although this project isn't in his style it's still a pertinent link and an opportunity to introduce students to another artist's work.

I'm also going to ask the students to limit their color palette to warm or cool colors.  My example uses cool colors.

Materials needed:

4X4" white paper

Heart stencils

Colored pencils

Ruler

Fine point Sharpie or marker

I'm going to give the students a 4X4" Square of white paper, marker, stencils and ruler.

They are going to follow along with me step by step.

Trace a heart in the center of the square.

Add another heart inside that first heart.

Place a dot somewhere inside the small heart - anywhere will work.

Draw 12 lines with a ruler from the dot to the outside of the paper.

Pick one of the outside sections and color it.

Now finish coloring the outside sections with every other one being colored in.

Use another color (green) to do the opposite sections in the bigger heart.  Making sure to alternate sections so there is never a solid area of color.

Finally choose another color for the inside of the heart and do the opposite sections from the green ones in the layer before.  It is like the outside ones continue with a layer of white in between.

This creates a tunnel effect and makes the drawing look like it has depth - an optical illusion - 

or Op Art.