K, 1st and 2nd grade Make Observation Drawings of Bicycles.

Look closely: what shapes do you see?
Where do you notice circles?
...Triangles?
...Other shapes?

How will you put all the shapes together to build a drawing of this bicycle?
Where do the shapes connect?
Where will you add details?

How will you make the shapes that you see stand out?
Will you use your imagination to add color?

Will you use your imagination to make up a background story for your bicycle?

Will you draw a person on your bicycle?

"I drew the front tire circle too flat, so I decided to make it into a flat tire.  The tack is in the tire."

"I drew the tires too flat, so I made them melting in hot lava."

...by the way... take a look at our color wheel!

How do our students mix and paint such a wonderful array of colors?  They mix the colors they want themselves!

This is our color wheel is a work in progress.  As students mix a new color, they make a color chip... we then put in onto our color wheel as a class.  We talk about how the color was made (we use math here).  We also use art vocabulary (shade, tint, hue, primary, secondary) so that art words become second nature to us.

Students only use the primary colors of red, yellow, and blue, as well as black (not pictured) and white.

K, 1st, and 2nd grades make Painted Shape Collage Animals and People. Building on their texture/shape collage experience, students discover how they can put shapes together to make a creature in an environment.

This post has many, many, many photos!! Scroll through the entire post and you won't be disappointed!

What shapes do you need to put together to make a person?

What special kinds of animals do you know about?  What special shapes do you need to put together to make that animal?

Where does your creature live?  What kind of background do you need to make to show that?

Do the cardboard shapes make you think of a specific type of creature?

How can you put shapes together to make a larger part of your animal?

K, 1st, and 2nd grades make Texture Collages!! Using Shape, Color, and Texture to Build Collage Compositions...

Where will you put different shapes in your collage?

How can you put shapes together to make a texture?

Will you make a design or a picture?

Will your collage be symmetrical?
Where will you overlap shapes?

Observation Flower Collages... Looking Closely

Part of my role as an art teacher is to ask questions of my students so that they can develop their own strategies to solve an artistic question.  In this way, I hope to set up a space where students trust their own visions.

Will you show your flower in an environment?

We talked about observation as looking closely to become aware of the qualities of what we are looking at.  We talked about how our wild flowers have many, many petals.  How the center of the flower was comprised of numerous seed pods, and how the stem was rough and hairy. The challenge here was translating these observations into a collage of paper shapes.    

How will you change the paper to show the texture of the stem?

Ultimately, the process of making art from observation helps to break down a clichéd schematic approach to making images.