3rd grade Blue Dog

3rd Grade: George Rodrigue's Blue Dog

3rd Graders learned about Mr. Rodrigue and his famous Blue Dog. Students learned about the Loup -Garou, the Cajun Legend about the dog. Students loved seeing his many paintings and how Blue Dog seemed to travel to all the parts of the world. Blue Dog had many different backgrounds in his paintings and it was fun to imagine the many places he traveled.

For this project, we did a step-by-step of a basic Blue Dog. Then, students created a personality for their dog and imagined where he was and what clothes/accessories he would need. Our blue oil pastels got very used up as you might expect, so by the time the last class was on this project I let them choose any color they wanted for their dog! The dogs were colored in with oil pastel (we did review values, and I encouraged students to do dark on the edges and lighter towards the center of the dog ). Backgrounds were either oil pastel or watercolor. These are very imaginative I think!

Kinder Warm and Cool Castles

Kinder: Klee Castles

Kinder students learned a bit about Paul Klee who loved working with geometric shapes in his paintings. Students had fun finding the "hidden castles" in his work. We also talked about why Klee made figures towns, and gardens with so many shapes. Along with learning about Paul Klee, I introduced students to basic parts of a castle-towers, "crenels" (those crevices above the battlement walls), moat, drawbridge). 

We talked about warm and cool colors, as well. For this painting, we did a step-by-step of a castle and moat. Students added windows using lots of different shapes. Students could add flags and a door. Students colored in the windows, flags and door with oil pastels. Then, students painted the castle and moat with cool colors. Finally, students painted the background sky with warm colors. This was kinder, so some students got their warm and cool paint colors a bit out of place. However, I think those mistakes don't look very bad at all! It's some of the "happy little accidents" that come during art class.