Autumn birches

You need: 

1. drawing sheets A3 size
2. painters tape in several widths
3. liquid watercolor paint in red, green and yellow 
4. brushes
5. tempera paint  
6. stipple brush
7. old shopping card/customer card
8. saucers and jars

Choose thick drawing paper,  to avoid ripping when you remove the tape . 

Look at birch trees. What do you see?   

 

• straight trunks
• trunks are white
• horizontal peeling bark
• autumn color leaves: orange, yellow, brown, red

What to do?
Step 1
Place the sheet on the table with the narrow site down.  Stick strips of tape from top to bottom. Wide for the trunks, narrower for the branches. Note: branches grow up! 

Step 2

Paint the background in strips with diluted liquid watercolor. Let dry. Peel off the tape carefully. 

Step 3

Put some black tempera paint on a saucer. Dip a customer card in the paint. Pull this in several places from left to right (or right to left!) to halfway up the trunk to make the black streaks.

Step 4

Spray some warm colors tempera + green on a saucer.  Stipple leaves at the top of the trees using the stipple brush. Do not mix the colors, but use several colors at the brush at the same time. 

Step 5

Hang up! 

Works of art are made by students of grade 1. 

Positive negative pumpkin faces

You need:

1. black construction paper A4 
2. orange construction paper A5
3. ruler
4. pencil
5. scissors and glue
6. knives and cutting blades

What should you do? 

1. Divide the black sheet with ruler and pencil in four rectangles.  
2. Divide the four black rectangles each in two rectangles. 
3. Divide the orange sheet in four rectangles; each rectangle is as big as a half black one.
4. Draw half of a pumpkin against the edge of an orange rectangle. 
5. Draw one eye, half of a mouth and a nose and cut out with a cutting blade.
6. Cut the outline of the pumpkin using scissors. 
7. Paste the half orange pumpkin against the edge of a black rectangle. Paste eye and mouth on the opposite side of the pumpkin.
8. Repeat these steps to make the other three pumpkins.

Wacky witches

You need:

1. charcoal
2. chalk pastels
3. drawing sheet 
4. black construction paper
5. hairspray

How do you recognize a witch? What animals or things do you associate with a witch? What does an angry witch look like? Think of characteristics like mouth, eyes and eyebrows.

Tell students how to use charcoal. Explain how we make differences in colors. Show how to use an eraser to erase the charcoal lines and a tissue or  to sweep out the color.

What should you do?

• Draw the contours of a witch face with charcoal. 
• Color the face with chalk pastel in a cool color. 
• Draw a mouth, eyes and nose with charcoal. 
• Add some typical witchy things like a cat, bat, spiderweb etc.
• Use hairspray to fix the drawing. 
• Stick the drawing on a black sheet. 

Works of art made by students of grade 4.

Which witch is this?

You need:

1. drawing sheet 
2. pencil
3. markers
4. white or silver pencil 
5. black paper for background

Start this the lesson with a class discussion about witches. How do you recognize a witch? What things belong to a witch? What can you say about the clothing of a witch?

What to do?

1. Draw with pencil the lower half of the body of a witch: skirt and legs. 
2. Draw things that belong to witches. 
3. Draw a horizon line at about 1/3 from the bottom. 
4. Color the drawing with markers. 
5. Color the background with markers or chalk pastel. 
6. Paste the artwork on a black background and decorate the rim with theme-related little drawings in white or silver pencil.

In the debriefing should be clear that you only need a half drawing to recognize a witch: Which witch is this?

All works of art made by students of grade 5.

Catching leaves

You need:

1. white drawing sheet A3 size
2. oil pastels
3. liquid water color paint
4. brushes

What should you do?

• Trace your hand (thumbs point to each other) on the bottom of the sheet.
• Color them with oil pastels. 
• Draw some swirling autumn leaves above the hands and color them with oil pastels. 
• Paint the background with diluted liquid water color paint leaving some space on the edges.
• Variant: choose real autumn leaves instead of drawn ones. Stick them on the drawing AFTER painting and drying the background.

Works of art made by students of grade 3. 

Autumn leaves with tissue paper

You need:

1. white drawing 
2. tissue paper in autumn colors
3. brush
4. jar with water
5. white crayons

What should you do?

• Show different shapes of autumn leaves. Discuss shapes and colors. 
• Draw different leaves on the sheet with white crayon. 
• Tear parts of tissue paper (not too small). Use warm autumn colors. 
• Stick the pieces by wetting the sheet part by part and laying them in it. Watch out: no two same colour pieces next to each other. Be sure the tissue paper is wet enough to bleed.

• Let the artwork dry a little. When it's still moist a bit, pull of the tissue paper.

Works of art made by students of grade 3. 

Autumn leaves mandala

You need:

1. white drawing sheet A4 size
2. compasses
3. pencil
4. oil pastels

Draw a circle with a diameter of 20 cm. Draw within about 1 cm another circle (the edge of the mandala). Cut out and fold into 8 pieces. Draw against one of the folds half of an autumn leaf using black oil pastel.

Fold the sheet and press firmly with the hands to get a print of the leaf on the other side of the fold. Trace this half with black oilpastel. Repeat this and draw the other three leaves. Colour the leaves and background with oil pastels in warm colours. Colour the edge with a nice pattern.

All works of art made by students of grade 6.

Just like Bart van der Leck

Bart van der Leck (1876-1958) was a Dutch painter and designer. He was part of De Stijl art movement with, among others, Theo van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian and Gerrit Rietveld. Artists of De Stijl searched for a new art style that better suited to the future after World War 1.   

To create his abstract art, Van der Leck reduces a figurative representation further and further to squares, rectangles, triangles and lines in red, yellow and blue against a white or grey background. Although art work of Mondrian and Van der Leck may look similar, there is an important difference: Van der Leck works from a figurative representation that he slowly simplifies, while Mondriaan works directly from abstraction. 

artwork made by students of grade 3

View three works of art by Bart van der Leck without mentioning the titles: The Sower (1921), Composition IV (1918) and Farm girl with cow  (1921). (due to copyright only the links to the originals here.) 

Ask students what they see in the paintings. They may nog immediately see a sower, but probably come to a man who does something. A hiker? But what are those red squares? Do they see a cow and a farm girl? How do you recognize a cow? And finally: what do you see in Composition IV? This is the most abstract work and there is no clear representation in it. Perhaps students have an idea? 

Ask about the similarities between these works: 

• primary colors + black
• just straight lines 
• white background

What do you need?

1. action photo of an athlete
2. black sheet and a half white sheet
3. scraps of paper in red, yellow and blue 
4. scissors
5. glue

What should you do?

1. Find a photo of an athlete in action and paste in on black paper.  
2. Cut out strips and squares from red, blue and yellow.  Place them in the same shape as the athlete on white paper. Satisfied? Glue them.
3. Glue the white sheet below the photo on the the black sheet. 

Elements of art: shape, line, color.

Techniques: cut and glue en plakken. 

Cat and bird, like Paul Klee

Paul Klee (1879 – 1940) is a German/Swiss artist. His work straddles the line between figurative and abstract. Klee painted landscapes, portraits, animals, mythology, mysterious machines. Does his work belong to cubism, expressionism or surrealism? He brought something from every art movement. Klee looked for patterns and motifs in all kind of art styles: African art, Islamic decorations, clothing and also form children's drawings. Klee left behind more than 9000 works of art.  

Cat and bird, Paul Klee, 1928

You need:

1. drawing sheet
2. pencil
3. black marker
4. watercolor paint
5. pencils

What do you see?

Discuss Klee's painting Cat and bird. 

• the head of a cat with a bird above his eyes. What would this mean? Does the cat dream of its prey? 
• left side of the head is wider than the right side
• large eyes with vertical pupils
• one eye is larger than the other
• warm colors, except the eyes
• bright pink nose in the shape of a heart

How to make it?  

Step 1: Fold the sheet in four. Scetch a W. 

Step 2: Put a dot on the fold and and draw a slightly curving line to it from both sides: the top of the head.  

Step 3: Continue the lines from step 2 downwards.  

Step 4: Draw the eyes from the center to the  side. Draw pupils.  

Step 5: Draw nose, whiskers and the little bird.  

Step 6: Color cat and background using water color paint. Trace the outlines with a black marker.  

Drawings made by students of grade 1, 2 and 3.  

Elements of art: color, line, shape.

Step by step idea: Blowing Rock Museum, NC. 

The vase of Kandinsky

You need:

1. colored cardboard A3 size
2. sponges
3. paint rollers 
4. strips of  ribbed cardboard
5. bubble wrap
6. tempera paint
7. brushes
8. scissors  
9. glue

Read here about Kandinsky's concentred circles. 

Organisation

Divide this lesson in two moments. For lesson 1 (step 1-4) create four table groups where students can print. Divide students among these four groups. When someone is ready, he can go to the next group. In this way students rotate between the groups. In lesson 2 (step 5) the individual parts are combined into a work of art and students sit in their own place in the classroom.  

Group A: printing with sponges. One sponge per color. Some paper plates with tempera paint and a paint roller on each plate. 

Group B: printing with cardboard. Lay out cardboard strips  about the width of a ruler. Spray s few colors of tempera paint on paper plates. Students smear the head side of the cardboard with a brush, see picture. 

Group C: printing with bubble wrap. Lay out A4 drawing sheets and pieces of bubble wrat. Students roll in the bubble wrap with a paint roller and print it on a sheet. 

Group D: painting concentric circles. Place thick drawing paper, tempera paint and paper plates here. 

What should you do? 

Step 1: Place the cardboard upright in front of you. Stamp approximately 1/3 of the bottom full with a sponge and paint. Don't rub, stamp!  

Step 2: Stamp with the cardboard strips horizontal and vertical stripes above the sponge strips. 

Step 3: Use a paint roller to roll a piece of bubble plastic with tempera paint and print it on a white sheet. Let dry. 

Step 4: Fold a white A4 sheet into 6 squares. Paint 6 different concentric circles in each square like Kandinsky did. Each circle has 3 colors. Let dry.  

Step 5: Cut the circles. Draw a symmetric vase on the back side of the bubble plastic print and cut out. Paste vase and flowers on the colored cardboard. 

all works of art are made by students of grade 3 

Elements of art: color, nuance, shape, line

Techniques: printing with different materials, painting, cutting, pasting.  

A day at the beach

Artworks made by students of grade 5

You need:

1. drawing sheet A3 size
2. white drawing sheets
3. tempera paint
4. brushes
5. scissors
6. markers and/or pencils
7. glue
8. pencils

Talk about a day at the beach: things (to do) on the sand, things (to do) in the water and things (to do) in the air. Talk about people standing in the water: they seem to have half legs!

Cover four tables with newspaper and put three containers with paint on it:

• yellow and a little brown besides (beach) + two big brushes
• blue and a little green (seawater) + two big brushes
• blue and white (air) + two big brushes 
• white (surf) + two brushes to stamp

Show how to paint the beach: a lot of yellow on the brush and a little brown for the beach (do not mix!). Do the same with blue and white for the air, and blue with green for the sea. Make wavy motions with the brush to accentuate the water. Finish with a white stamping brush for the surf.

While four students are painting, the others can start with the drawing part of this lesson: draw people and things you see on the beach. Color with markers or color pencils. Cut those little drawings and paste them on the beach, the water or in the air.

Olympic athletes

You need:

1. scissors
2. glue
3. white drawing paper A1 size
4. cardboard in Olympic colors
5. compasses

Start this lesson with the symbol of the Olympics: the colored rings. What do these rings mean? What colors do they have? How are they placed together? Ask one or two children to take the position of an athlete. What is the position of the legs, arms and body? Ask another student to show another position and discuss it again.
This is a group work for five students. Every group gets a big white sheet, five sheets of colored cardboard (colors of the rings: black, yellow, red, blue, green) and at least five copies of the athlete.
Step one: each group member cuts an Olympic ring, using compasses and scissors. Paste this five rings on the big white sheet. Look carefully which ring has to be pasted in front or back, and which ones have to be pasted through each other. Be sure the little cutting line is pasted underneath another ring.

  Step two: Every student takes a copy of the body and cuts every part of it. Then these bodyparts have to be pasted around, in, behind and in front of the Olympic rings.

Stamping with Mondrian

Goal: reducing the visible world in horizontal and vertical lines and primatr colors.   

Technique: stamping. 

You need:

1. black cardboard 
2. sponges cut in different sizes (squares and rectangles) 
3. tempera paint in red, blue and yellow 
4. brushes
5. white crayons 

View these artworks of Mondrian and talk about how he abstracted a tree. 

Also talk about Victory Boogie Woogie, the painting in which you can see part of the map of New York. Tell students we are going to make our own Mondrian map. Discuss the terms primary colors, square, rectangle, vertical and horizontal lines.

Instruction 

Brushes will not be rinsed, but will remain the same color.

Show how to use a brush to rub the sponge with paint. 

Show how to stamp: do not slide the sponge, but lift it off the paper. This way you'll get a tight shape.  

Stamp horizontally or vertically only. 

Do not stamp two of the same colors next to each other. 

Make sure the shapes don't touch each other. You must be able to see the black roads between them. 

When the work had dried, draw stripes on the black roads using a white crayon. 

Elements of art: shape, color, line. 

Artworks are made by students of grade 1/2.