Where the Wild Things Are

I do not know any art teacher who does not like "Where the Wild Things Are" Seriously. So I thought of a project to have my 1st experience it and have them focus on shapes, texture and a tiny bit of landscape developement/depth, with watercolor paints. 

To start we read the book and discussed the themes behind it. Next we observed the art style around it and what we noticed about the body designs of the wild things. Noticing the shapes and size and that there was texture. I had them example what would be good lines to use for textures and what they should include in their wild things. IE no robots? or pirates? Wild things are more like two animals put together. 

So we sketched and practiced with sketchbooks and white boards to help out. 

I really pushed for big! And to follow those shapes with texture. I had them draw them with pencil first then use crayons to do outline and just draw their texture. They asked why they couldn't color it in and I explained they will get to experiment with watercolor paints and they will discover something interesting about watercolor paints and crayon. And showed them pictures of the book pages again to understand they are on ground and the sky goes to that ground line. 

They had a ball with painting and I had them develop good habits of setting up their space and understanding how to do painting without smooshing the brush down. This was their first time with me using the big 16 count set. 

I would like to do this project again but really need to push more of the DO NOT color in idea. And have the animal mixed. I had a couple give their wild thing names so I might play with that more next time and have them maybe express an emotion and story about their wild thing after Max left them. 

Group of Seven Landscapes

So after one of my 1st grade classes, their teacher informs me that they are studying maps and landscapes. She knew I like to integrate and wanted to inform me.

My brain went to work. I wanted to do something different and save some other landscapes I do for later in the year. After some digging, I discovered the group of seven. A Canadian landscape group of artists, who all had different styles and all painted the landscape of their country. PERFECT. Now the challenge of designing the project it self.

First step was having the kiddos paint the mountains I wanted to include, inspired by above. 

I have the students fold the paper in half to give us the horizon line and a line for the mountains. From here we discussed what would be a good line to use to make mountains, after I demonstrated how I did it. (Note above is a student one.) Once drawn, I had them go over the lines with black oil pastels, it offered a thicker line and gave them some experience in the medium. Next we painted and I stressed not painting the sky because we were doing something special later on. 

Next we added northern lights. I showed them some pictures of the night sky up there and how the artists were inspired by this as well. And showed them a video about northern lights. I asked what colors they saw and we went to work. 

For the northern lights, I used simple white chalk pastels with color on top. I stressed the importance of  going one direction with their blending or as I called it "wooshing" they had a lot of fun and really liked the effect. Once done wooshing, they simple cut their white sky out and glue their mountains onto their night sky.