Mrs. Edwards' Art Class

Welcome Artists!!

Thoughts about K-5 Art...
I have a special place in my heart for Kindergarten. I did my student teaching with a group of the sweetest K-5 students! As much as I love these cuties, I have to say it is one of the most difficult art classes! There is so much that is new to them, that I often can easily get frustrated. Thankfully, for me, it's just easier (and way more rewarding) to laugh and pray in those times!! When I first started teaching art, my wonderful and perfect lesson plans for K-5 had to be thrown out the window. I started from scratch and got down to the very basic, and very FUN and exciting lessons for this group of kids. I realized this: What's more important? Teaching the kids to recognize a VanGogh or Seurat painting when they see it? Or teaching them how to appreciate art and get excited about it!? Obviously, at that age, most of them love art anyway... but I want to foster a love for art and desire to be creative in all of my students and it must start in that first year of art. That can't happen if I begin with lessons loaded with technicalities and projects too challenging to enjoy. If a student becomes frustrated to the point of giving up, I have failed as an art teacher! My goal now is to come up with lessons that "secretly" teach the principles and concepts of art that they will need later on! This way, students just see a really fun activity that leaves them craving for more!

Hence... rainbow hair!!! (The actual lesson)

Again, starting with the basics, I get the students excited about color, about the rainbow, and about the absolute beauty of creation- God's masterpiece! We go over the color wheel which actually is slightly different than the rainbow.

• Rainbow= "ROYGBIV" -this is a scientific breakdown of the color spectrum
• Color wheel= Red ,Yellow, and Blue are primary; Orange, Green, and Purple are Secondary.. so basically we don't include indigo.. (which is basically blue, right?)

We did use rainbow order though, when we created our happy faces with crazy hair! This activity was meant to be more fun version of just coloring a wheel with crayons. The students were encouraged to be creative with the style of hair and expression on the faces!

(Note: Even though you are not viewing this until April 11, this post is actually from March 14, but Mrs. Edwards is sometimes "bloggically-challenged" and forgot to officially publish it!!)

Welcome to the art blog featuring the best students in the world!
It’s Second Grade’s turn to show you how to draw a realistic human eye! They created unbelievable sketches that included the following parts of the eye:
Iris                                    Pupil
Reflective Highlight           Eyelids
Eyelashes                         Eyebrows

Some of us decided to include wrinkles too! We also discussed that the eye can take on many different shapes depending on the expression on our face. Take a look at our beautifully and carefully drawn sketches of the human eye!

Great work, Alex!!

Ellen's shading makes the eyes look very nice!

Mackenzi just about mastered the "closed eye"!

Micah's eyes look so real!

Hello Friends!

This week 4th, 5th and 6th grade art students are learning how to draw the human eye. This is part two of a series on drawing the human face. (Part one was drawing the nose!) I have been so impressed with everyone's progress! They are doing a great job!

• Skills used: shading, observation, proportion, attention to detail

1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade students have been learning all about colors this year. They can tell you the primary colors, the secondary colors, neutral colors, warm and cool colors, and now we are learning about complementary colors. This week we made self-portraits using only 2 colors: a primary color and its complement. Since this was going to create a cartoon-looking picture, we decided to create a speech bubble with one word that described us. Our classmates helped us think of an edifying word that summed up each student.

• Skills used: correct color choosing, following directions, including all aspects of human face, creative lettering, neat work (coloring, lines, planning)

Kindergarten art students made some Marbleized Mittens! First we made mittens out of our favorite color (of paper). Then we chose 2-4 different colors of paint, dipped marbles in the paint and placed our mittens and marbles in a box. We rolled the marbles around and around to create beautiful designs on our mittens!

• Skills used: tracing our hands, cutting, color choosing, following directions.