Marisa Christensen- Art Gallery

  Description: In this lesson, we learned about the artist Claude Monet and looked at his famous painting of the bridge over the water lilies. The first step is to take watercolor paper and tape down the edges. Then you're going to take a paint brush and dunk it in clean water and wet your paper. You're going to use cool colors and paint your water. Then set it aside to dry. Going to take your pre-cut lily pad and a green marker and draw in the lines. Then, take different shades of green crayons and color in your lily pad. White piece of paper and draw a flower, and cut it out. You're going to take the petals and roll them up so they curl.  Take a long strip of pink construction paper and cut little flaps, but don't cut all the way. Then you're going to roll up the pink paper and hot glue it on your flower you cut out. Hot glue the flower to the lily pad and glue the lily pad to your watercolor painting.  Extension: You can take this in a social study when learning ...

  Description: In this project, we learn about the Northern Lights. We learned six different oil pastel techniques, one with light and heavy blending, taking baby oil and rubbing it on the pastel. For this project, we took two pieces of black construction paper, and on one of them we drew an outline of mountains and cut out the outline. Then we lightly trace the outline onto our second piece of construction paper. We took three different oil pastels to make our northern lights. First, you color a little square, then take your finger and drag it in an upward motion to smudge the pastels on the paper. You keep doing this with each of your three colors. Then you can take a white crayon or pastel and outline or color in the mountain's peaks.   Extension : When you do a lesson on galaxies or outer space, you can have students create their own galaxies using the rubbing techniques. Learning about weather, you can have them create a sky right before a storm or creating a sunset...

  Description: In this project, we learned about clay and the different techniques artists use on clay. We learned about the importance of kneading clay and getting the air bubbles out of the clay so that when we go to put it in the kiln, it won't explode. Scoring to connect different pieces of clay together by taking a tool and making little lines where you want to connect the two and dipping your finger in water and applying it to the scored clay. We created a flower bowl. We started by kneading the clay and rolling our clay into a slab. Then we took a bowl and placed it upside down onto our clay slab, and cut out the extra clay. Then we drew our flower onto the clay and reviewed the extra to create our flower. We place our flower into the bowl to shape the flower.  Extension project: This Project would be perfect for when students learn about plants and creating their own plant bowl. The students can add the different parts of the flower and do a vocabulary activity with wh...

Description: We learn different watercolor techniques. Crayons or oil pastel can resist the paint; graded washing paint is diluted with water.  We took watercolor paper and a ruler. We drew three lines in pencil to create 2 walls and a floor. One line will be vertical, with a couple of inches away from the edge of the paper. We drew it 3/4 down, then drew a slanted line from the vertical line ending to the edge of the paper. We drew a horizontal line to the meeting point of the other two lines. Then we drew a table with a vase filled with three flowers of our choosing.  Extension Project: For an extension project, you can add it to the math lesson for students who are learning how to measure and create different shapes with crayons. 

Description: We learn about Day of the Dead and connect it to Mexican culture. We made Papel picado. We got a template to help guide us of where to cut and we got to come up with our own designs.   Step 1: Place the precut tissue paper inside of template Step 2 : Lightly trace the dotted line and box onto the tissue paper Step 3 : Fold the tissue paper into thirds (so there are three even sections) like a letter then fold in half hotdog style.  Step 4: Open it up and refold it in half, hamburger style Step 5: Draw a small middle design on the fold (do not draw beyond the next fold line) and cut out the design Step 6: Open it up, and fold the first small section (there were 6 sections, now there will be 5) Step 7 : Draw and cut out the pattern along the new fold Step 8: Open and fold the next small section only and repeat step 5 Step 9 : Repeat steps 5 and 6 to cut out a pattern on each of the 5 folds Step 10 : Fold the thicker top section (should not have been cut) i...

  Description: In this project, we learn about a famous print-making artist named Andy Warhol. He showed that everyday objects can be art, from a soup can, Mickey Mouse, and people. We got to take a small square piece of paper and draw a flower of our choosing. Printmaking is like stamping. You take a piece of Styrofoam and put your flower drawing on top of the Styrofoam. You take a pen and trace your flower onto the Styrofoam by pushing through the paper. You took your styrofoam and went over to one of the printmaking stations that had wax paper taped down to the table with the paints of the primary colors. You squeeze some paint onto the wax paper and roll it out with one of the rollers until it is smooth. You take the rollers and roll the paint onto your Styrofoam square, take our final piece of paper, place it onto the Styrofoam square, and take a roller with no paint and roll over the top of the final paper. You peel the Styrofoam off, and you've got your design. We made four ...

  Description: In this project, we have to look at different stained-glass artwork. We got two sheets of paper, and on one of the sheets we divided it into four different parts. We've got to create our own designs in the four sections using a pencil and ruler. Once we felt comfortable enough, we took the other piece of paper to draw our design we wanted to transfer over to a clear plastic transparent sheet/paper. We took the clear sheet and put it on top of our paper with the designs and taped it to the table to keep it from moving. We took a sharpie and traced our design onto the clear sheet. After we were done tracing, we got to pick three different colored Sharpies and color in our design.  Extension activity: I think a great extension activity would be having each of the students get a little square of the clear sheet and printer paper and having them draw their favorite animal and write about their animal from their animal's point of view. Talking about what their animal ...

 Description: For this activity, we started by making ruby-colored glasses out of red paper and a thick red film. Once the project is complete, the glasses will be used. We were introduced to a painting of the safari biome and identified the different animals that live in the safari. We pick out a small image of a typical animal that lives in the safari and practice drawing it by drawing upside down. Drawing upside down helped us focus on the lines and shapes rather than the object itself. When we felt comfortable, we were asked to draw it for the main project. The animal drawing was done with a light blue colored pencil. After our animal was completed then we drew 3-4 different shapes/ patterns over the top in warm colors, which disguises our animal. When trying to find the animal, you would have to wear the ruby glasses, which would remove the patterns so you could clearly see the animal. On a notecard, we wrote three clues so our peers could guess what it was before using their ...

Description : For this assignment, we looked at van Gogh's Starry Night and had to create our own version of the famous Starry Night painting. I did a desert theme with a sunset background. To start this project, we ripped up some tissue paper in our choice of colors. We then glued them to colored paper of our choice to create a sky illusion, allowing the colors to pop. Once we glued the tissue paper from the back, we painted glue over the top to seal it completely. During the dry process, we took a black piece of large construction paper and sketched out a skyline of our choice to add to our sky. We attached this by gluing it on the bottom and letting it completely dry.  Extension Activity : I think an extension project could be having students create their galaxies while learning about outer space, or when learning about seasons, you can have students pick their favorite season and create it. This can be done with lower and upper elementary.