2nd Grade Project: Piet Mondrian - Stencils, Colored Pencils, and Neoplasticism

The 2nd graders were introduced to the work of Piet Mondrian.  We viewed our introductory presentation and discussed what made his new "Modern Art" special and different. Highlighting his use of lines, shapes (specifically rectangles and squares) and primary colors; we then began our own work in his style.

To the particular enjoyment of the students, they were introduced to 'boogie woogie'.  Mondrian both enjoyed and was inspired by jazz, so during our project we also listened to jazz.  This again was very enjoyable, to the point where I had not even finished handing our materials on our second day when I was being reminded, "Don't forget the jazz."

Using a square stencil, we overlapped and traced square after square.  We traced a minimum of eight squares, though some of our artists wanted to trace more than that.

Then in the style of Piet Mondrian, we used the primary colors on the rectangles and squares in our compositions, leaving the irregular shapes white.  Some students wanted to use patterns to fill their rectangles and squares, while others opted for the more traditional solid color.

3rd & 4th Grade Project: 6 Lines

Our 3rd and 4th grade classes explored using different lines in this project.  We used six lines: straight, wavy, curvy, zig zag, squiggly, and dotted/dashed lines.  We learned that when a line crosses itself it makes a shape.  These shapes created from lines crossing are what gives our project its unique look.

Students used each of the six lines to cross the paper in some way.  Once they used the six lines, they were free to add any additional lines that they wanted to.  After the lines were complete, the students outlined their pencil with either black or colored marker ( student's choice ).

We then went through our designs, coloring all the new unique shapes created by the crossing lines.  We did not cross any lines with our colors.  This gave us some fantastic results.  This project was a favorite of the students.

1st & 2nd Grade Project: Tree of Life - Scratch Art

The 1st and 2nd grade both learned about Gustav Klimt and how he loved color.  So using Gustav and his love of color as our inspiration, we first covered our papers in crayon.  We then painted our paper completely black with tempera paint.

Below is a sample to show students what happens when you cover your crayon with black paint.

Once their painting was completed and our papers were ready, we used chalk to draw our 'Trees of Life'.

We then used our scratching tools to remove the black paint from the inside of our trees and the swirls of our trees' limbs.  Some of our students paint was too sticky to remove so they had difficulty with project, it was hard to watch them do so well for all the steps and then not get a satisfactory result.