Spooky Trees in Charcoal

Happy Halloween! My grade 2s created these spooky trees just in time for Halloween. It's still not a major thing in Australia but seems to be gaining popularity every year. This lesson has been doing the rounds on pinterest thanks to Jennifer Lipsey Edwards who posts many of her elementary art lessons to her pinterest page here.

Many students hadn't used charcoal before this lesson and it was a great introduction to different charcoal techniques, creating different shades and beginning to understand perspective.

Textured Heart Paintings

 

This is a project I did with my Grade 6 students back in February to tie in with Valentine's Day. The inspiration came from this painting by artist and illustrator Donna Downey (found via Nic Hahn on Pinterest (thanks Nic!). Students scrunched a piece of white tissue paper, glued it to their page and painted the textured page in a colour of their choice. Once dry, students rubbed oil pastel in a contrasting colour over their page to pick up the texture of the paper. They then drew and painted a heart and outlined their heart in black oil pastel as well as creating a border. They were then asked to add black and white oil pastel to the heart to create light and shadow and imply a more 3D object. Most students proved to need a lot more practice with this concept, however, I really love the texture and will definitely use this technique again.