Winter Wonders

During the cold, sometimes blustery month of January, my primary and intermediate art classes created projects to coincide with the weather.  Now our hall walls give one a chilly feeling.

 Winter Trees

My grades 4 - 7 class created winter trees.  We first read about Dutch artist Hendrick Avercamp and looked at an example of his painting as pictured in The Usborne ART Treasury by Rosie Dickins.  Then we created our own versions.   It took a couple of classes as we did the landscape one day and had to leave it to dry.  During the next art class we painted the trees using watery black paint.  We dropped globs of paint on our paper where we wanted our tree trunks to be and blew through a straw, first upwards to create a trunk, then diagonally to create branches, shrubs and bushes.  We didn't always have control of the direction the branches went, so we had some surprises.

 

The Best Snowman Ever

My grades 1 - 3 art project was inspired by Kathy Waldner's blog (not sure what her blog spot is).  We read The Best Snowman Ever by Margery Cuyler, then proceeded to draw our own snow people with oil pastels on blue construction paper.  The girls' people turned into queens, princesses and the like, while the boys stayed more traditional, with the exception of one snow-soldier.  All of them seem rather happy.

 

Mosaic Snowflakes

This art class started with a discussion of warm and cool colours and how they make is feel.  I used the book 50 Christmas things to Make and Do by Minna Lacey and Rebecca Gilpin, another Usborne book.  Contrary to it's title, this book has almost as many wintery ptojects in it as it does Christmassy ones.  Beforehand I cut shades of blues and purples into various sizes triangles.  Students were given 12 x 18  pieces of white art paper and the triangles, were instructed to designed snowflakes.  The results are quite "cool" to say the least.