3rd Fall 2013

3rd Grade: Magritte Surrealistic Rooms

3rd Grade students studied various art works of Rene Magritte, famous Surrealism artist. Students enjoyed analyzing many of Magritte's works and enjoyed the mysteriousness and playfulness of much of his work. We discussed how many of Magritte's work were similar to books that have the viewer guess the ending. Students had many ideas of why Magritte painted the strange subjects he did and the purpose of his paintings. Mr. Magritte used lots of juxtaposition in his art work. This is when certain objects do not appear to be in correct proportion with other objects in the picture. Magritte's painting, Personal Values, was the inspiration for the student art shown here.

I did a step-by-step of drawing a room in 1 pt perspective. Students followed along for this. Students then drew in clouds, as Mr. Magritte had many skies in his art work and clouds were a common theme throughout many of his paintings. This added to the "surrealism" aspect of Personal Values and the room the students drew. Students then added wooden floor planks and painted the entire room with liquid watercolors. Students drew furniture and objects on separate paper, colored, cut and glued them into their room. This project was fun because their was lots of room for creativity. We had flying rockets, giant toothbrushes, and many delicious looking desserts! This project took students average 3-4 class periods to finish...one of our longer projects. Each class is an hour long. I think these results speak for themselves, though. These rooms are so much fun to look at. We can imagine ourselves in these rooms with objects that are juxtaposed and create our own stories to go with them.

3rd Grade: Austrailian Aboriginal Art

3rd Graders learned about Aboriginal art in Australia and how it's being preserved as it's very old and fragile. Students learned about bark paintings and rock paintings. We also talked about animals native to Australia-dingos, kangaroos and echidnas to name a few.Students saw some modern versions of "dot paintings" and how these paintings are very colorful and use the traditional colors of red, orange, white and red. Students learned about the symbols the Indigenous peoples of Australia used to communicate with each other. The Indigenous people also used stories and dance many times. 

Students chose an animal (native to Australia-snake, lizard, dingo, kangaroo) and painted it black. Students painted in ancient symbols and added in dot paintings. Students added final details with bronze, gold and silver sharpie markers.

These were all done on brown Kraft paper to resemble "bark or cave" surfaces.

I think these are so Great!