Unit Description
This year students have been exploring how artists find inspiration. For this unit students looked at three different sources of how artists find inspiration: Me- Self, You- Community, and Us- World.
Lesson One: Paper Maché
Lesson Description: During this lesson students started by learning about artists like, Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso, who were inspired by other cultures in the world other than their own. Then they looked through packets containing cultural objects from different countries in the world and made 2 quick sketches for each country. Next, students completed a brainstorming worksheet where they generated a design for the inside of their paper maché bowl or vessel. On this worksheet students were asked to look back at the previous lessons about themselves, their community, and the world to find two ideas of inspiration from two of the three topics. They combined these two ideas into two-three sketches and then chose one for their final design. Once the students had their designs they created bowls or vessels using paper maché and added color with tissue paper. The final step for students was to paste in their inside design into their bowl or vessel.
Documentation:
Lesson Two: Aboriginal Art
Lesson Description: As a part of finding inspiration from the world first and second-grade students learned about Aboriginal Art from Australia and then got to make their own Australian dot paintings. To start the lesson students were introduced to some history about Australia and the Aboriginal Artwork that comes from this country. When looking at the dot paintings we talked about how they used animals mostly for a subject and the dots created a pattern around the animal. This lead to the students brainstorming process to be about sketching four potential animals they might use in their final art piece. When done with their sketches they were asked to choose one animal and then make a final large drawing of this animal. Then students added color to the animal by covering the animal with water and bleed tissue paper. Student either chose warm or cool colors to cover their animal with. Once their animal was dry and the tissue paper was removed students cut out their animal and pasted it onto a large piece of black construction paper. Finally students completed their artwork by creating a dot pattern around their animal using the opposite colors (warm or cool) from what their animal was.
Documentation: