Coffeepots like Klaas Gubbels

Made by a student of grade 5

Klaas Gubbels (Netherlands, 1934) is a Dutch artist. He is best known for his still lifes of tables, chairs and coffee pots. He also makes sculptures, mostly with the same subjects.

Gubbels attended various art schools and teached art at the Art Academy in Rotterdam.

Gubbel's work became more abstract over the years. A characteristic of Klaas Gubbels is that he avoids all that is 'beautiful'. Beauty is unreal to him and keeps us away from the truth. The subject isn't interesting, but the humour, agression or dullness of this subject, that's what it's all about. The utensils, if they are freed from their jobs, end up with a mood or emotion.

Gubbels uses various techniques in his works: painting, drawing, graphic techniques, but also photographs, collages, assemblages and sculptures in glass and metal.

You need:

1. canvas A4 size
2. acrylic paint
3. brushes
4. jar with water
5. pencil

Show artwork from Klaas Gubbels. Discuss the subjects of his paintings. What stands out? Much or little detail? Depth? Perspective? Use of colour?

Students work on canvas with acrylic paint. Tell them about the properties of this paint: it dries quickly and is paintable.

Students have to make a painting with one of the topics that Gubbels frequently paints: chair, table or coffee pot. Unlike the real Gubbels works, the children in this task, however, have to paint a background. White is out of the question!

Made by a student of grade 5

Colour theory part two

Following Colour theory part one a lesson about the effect that colours have on each other.

The aim of this lesson is that students discover the effect of primary and secondary colours on one another.

You need:

1. two sheets of white or black paper, A3 size
2. coloured sheets in red, yellow, blue, orange, green and purple
3. glue

Pre-cut squares of coloured paper. Per student you need: 5 squares of 5 by 5 cm in all six colours and five squares of 3 by 3 cm in all six colours.

Repeat the terms primary and secondary colours and name the colours. Tell students they will see today how the colours interact. What would be yellow on blue? What about red on purple? What colours would stand out well, what not? Try to discover how we can systematically investigate. Eventually you come to the following concept:

A. primary on primary.
B. primary on secundary.
C. secundary on primary.
D. secundary on secundary.

primary on primary

A. Primary on primary.

To make all combinations of primary on primary to make you need 2 large and 2 small squares of all primary colours. Ask students to find out how, or give them the solution:

- blue on yellow and red on yellow
- yellow on blue and red on blue
- yellow on red and blue on red
Paste all combinations on a sheet of white paper. Write under it: primary on primary.

secundary on primary

B. Secundary on primary.
To make all combinations of  secundary on primary, you need 3 large squares of each primary colour and three small squares of each secundary colour. Ask students to find out how, or give them the solution:

- orange on yellow, purple on yellow, green on yellow

- green on blue, orange on blauw, purple on blue
- purple on red, green on red, orange on red
Paste all combinations on a sheet of white paper. Be sure the big squares in the same colour are next to each other. Write under it: secundary on primary.

primary on secundary

C. Primary on secundary.
To make all combinations of primary on secundary, you need 3 big squares of each secundary colour and 3 small ones of each primary colour. Ask students to find out how combinations have to be made, or give them the solution:

- yellow on orange, blue on orange, red on orange

- yellow on purple, blue on purple, red on purple
- yellow on green, blue on green, red on green
Paste all combinations on a sheet of white paper. Be sure the big squares in the same colour are next to each other. Write under it: primary on secundary.

secundary on secundary

D. Secundary on secundary.

To make all combinations of secundary on secundary, you need 2 big and 2 small squares of each secundary colour. Ask students to find out how combinations have to be made, or give them the solution: 
- purple on green, orange on green
- orange on purple, green on purple
- purple on orange, green on orange
Paste all combinations on a sheet of white paper. Write under it: secundary on secundary.

Ask students after making this work to discuss see which colors are most contrasting, which you hardly see, etc.

Colour theory part one

By students of grade 2

You need:

1. black cardboard 15 by 15 cm
2. coloured paper in yellow, orange, red, purple, blue, green
3. scissors
4. glue
5. pencil

Fo the first part of a lesson on colour theory, we repeated primary and secundary colours and showed how to make secundary colours out of primary colours. Students knew those colours, but didn't know the names. Tell them about the complementary colours, the colours that lie opposite each other in the circle, called complementary. Red is opposite green, yellow against purple, blue opposite orange.

The primary colors red, yellow and blue are in a triangle. The same goes for the secondary colours orange, green and purple.

Tell students to cut 6 shapes from the coloured sheets and paste them on black paper as discussed.

Use a pencil to draw triangles in dotted lines between the primary and secondary colours.

Portrait of your schoolmate

 

Made by students of grade 5

  

You need:

1. drawing paper A4 size
2. colour pencils
3. watercolour paint
4. brushes
5. coloured ribbed cardboard
6. stapler

After an instruction about proportions of a head, students draw their classmate who is sitting in front of him. The portraits are coloured with colour pencils, the background is painted with watercolour paint. The frames are made from coloured ribbed cardboard strips.

Pasta and beans landscape

You need:

1. cardboard A4 size
2. glue
3. several sorts of pasta and beans
4. pencil

Students have to draw a simple landscape on their piece of cardboard. Fill the several parts with glue and put beans and pasta on them.

Artwork made by students of grade 3

Plaster mask

Made by a student of grade 6

You need:

1. bandage plaster
2. vaseline
3. towel
4. jar with water
5. scissors
6. canvas
7. cloth tape
8. tempera paint
9. brush
10. stuff to decorate, like feathers, stones, shells, ribbons
11. glue

Work in groups of two students.

Show a You tube movie about making masks or read Wiki how manual. In brief students have to:

1. Put a towel around the shoulders and pull the hair off the face.

2. Coat the face well with vaseline, especially hair line, eyebrows and eyelashes.

 

3. Cut the bandage plaster in strips. Make the strips one by one wet and cover the face. Be sure the strips overlap a little. Leave the nose open.

4. Provide three layers plaster for a solid mask.

5. Remove the mask after 15 minutes.

6. Close the hole of the nose with a last plaster strip.

Outline the mask with a pencil on a canvas. Cut a hole in the canvas about 1 centimeter smaller than the mask. Push the mask through the hole from the back of the canvas and stick it to the front and back with cloth tape.

Paint the canvas and face with tempera. Decorate the artwork with feathers, ribbons, shells or strass stones.

Students of grade 6 with their masks

Flowers behind fence

Flowers behind fence with fingerprinted flowers, grade 1

You need:

1. white drawing sheet A4 size
2. masking tape
3. scissors
4. tempera paint
5. stencil brushes
6. bubble wrap
7. sponge strips

Create a fence with pieces of masking tape, about 2 cm from the bottom.

 

 

Cut a piece of bubble wrap that is as large as the sheet of drawing paper. Paint it with a thick brush, half blue and half green. Put the drawing sheet on top and rub with the hand, creating a bubble print. Use sponge strips (cut from an ordinary sponge) to stamp steals and leaves.

Use stencil brushes to stamp petals of use your fingers to print them. Stamp/print some flowers under the fence an between the poles of the fence. Leave the work to dry and gently pull off the masking tape.

Flowers behind fence with stamped flowers, grade 2

Group work like Keith Haring

Group work, made by students of grade 3

You need:

1. drawing sheet A1 size 
2. pieces of cardboard 10 by 15 cm
3. pencil
4. scissors
5. glue
6. colour markers
7. permanent black marker 

We worked in groups of five students.
Each student draws a figure on a piece of cardboard in the style of Keith Haring: no details, movement, a figure like in a comic. Cut the figures and trace them several times on the big sheet. Working together is required!

Instructions:
- Do not draw twice the same figure next to each other.

- Vary the position: upright, horizontally, diagonally. Turn the cardboard to get a mirror figure.

- Do not start in the middle, but work from the side and place the figures as close to each other.

- Outline all figures with a permanent black marker.

- Divide the intervening areas into smaller areas by straight lines drawn with black marker.
- Choose one colour per person and colour the areas with these five colours.  

- Put your signature on the work like Keith Haring did!

Connected shells

Warm colours, made by Emmy, grade 6

You need:

1. white drawing sheet 20 by 20 cm
2. colour markers
3. fine black marker
4. pencil

Draw a few lines on the sheet to divide the paper into sections. Draw several shells on those lines. Be sure the shells touch eachother. Trace the shells with a fine permanent black marker. Colour the sections between the shells with colour markers in warm or cool colours.

Cool colours, made by Bjorn grade 5

Sailboat regatta

You need:

1. two sheets of white drawing paper
2. sandpaper
3. tempera paint in blue, green and white
4. brush
5. coloured paper
6. brown paper (grocery bag)
7. glue
8. blue paper A1 size

Spray paint stripes in blue, green and white on a saucer. Lay a sheet of white drawing paper before you, with the small size up. Paint it with coloured waves. Don't mix the colours on the saucer, but dip the brush in two or three colours. Leave the sheet to dry.

Take the second white sheet and lay it before you with the small side up. Cut a piece of sandpaper as wide as the sheet and 8 cm high. Paste the sandpaper on the bottom of the sheet.

Tear the painted sheet in wavy strips. Tear the straight sides of the first and last strip too, so that all strips have two wavy sides. 

Place the strips overlapping on the white sheet. Start below. Place the second strip partly under the first one, the third under the second etc. Paste down the short sides of the waves on the left and right.

Cut boats out of a brown paper bag; bigger ones below, smaller ones at the top (perspective). Cut masts out of the paper bag and sails out of coloured paper. Paste the boats between the waves and paste the long sides of the waves at the same time. Paste sails and masts on the boats.  

Paste or staple all works together on large blue sheets (A1 size) to create a beautiful group work.

Artworks made by students of grade 4

Filled with fruit

Made by a student of grade 3

You need:

1. white drawing sheet A4 size
2. oil pastels

Choose four fruits and draw many of them on the drawing sheet. The fruit should overlap. Colour them with oil pastels and outline with black.

Wavy weaving

Made by students of grade 3

You need:

1. paper strips in two colours, 4 x about 50 cm
2. black cardbaord
3. scissors
4. glue
5. printed grid of 5 by 5 squares, each square is 4 by 4 cm

1. Give all students the printed grid. Cut it along the outside and paste it on black cardboard.

2. Cut 10 stripes in two colours, 4 x 50 cm. Fold the ends of the strips about one cm.

3. Paste the fold edges exactly along the lines of the squares. Use two different colours alternately. Paste the arcs from bottom to top and from left to right, alternately. Cut a piece of the strip if it's too long. You may paste small squares to the ends of the rows as a finishing touch.

 

5. Press the strips gently and your weaving will look great!

MOMA

Made by Debbie, grade 6

You need:

1. drawing sheet A4 size
2. colour pencils
3. ruler

A lesson about drawing one point perspective.

Students draw a square in the middle of their sheet and draw four lines from the corners to the middle, see schedule. These are the floor and ceiling lines. Draw two lines from both short sides to the middle. Between these two lines the paintings has to be drawn. Draw lines from the bottom to the middle for tiles or parquet.
It's nice to draw artworks that students have made this schoolyear or to choose for artworks of famous painters.
Colour with colour pencils.

Puzzle drawing

Made by students of grade 5

You need:

1. white drawing sheet A4 size
2. markers
3. black construction paper
4. glue

Students draw organic shapes on a white sheet and colour them with markers. Then all shapes have to be cut out and pasted with a little space between them on a piece of black construction paper. Be sure to lay down the cut pieces directly on the right place, to avoid hours of puzzling!

Three spring flowers, three materials

 

Made by students of grade 3

You need:

1. three white drawing sheets 10 by 10 cm
2. coloured origami sheets 12 by 12 cm
3. coloured cardboard 14 by 38 cm
4. tempera paint
5. brushes
6. crayons
7. colour pencils
8. tulips, daffodils, bluebonnets or pictures of them
9. glue

Students scetch three different spring flowers on three sheets of 10 by 10 cm: bluebonnet, tulip and daffodil. Colour the flowers with three different materials: crayons, tempera paint and colour pencils. Paste the drawings on coloured origami sheets and paste them then on coloured cardboard.

Painting while listening to classical music

By Marrit (gr. 6, right part) and Luuk (gr. 1, left part)

You need: 

1.  cd's with classical music
2. cd-players
3. drawing sheet A2 size
4. brushes
5. tempera paint
6. jar with water

During a school project about music, students of grade 1 and 6 painted together while listening to classical music. We had five classrooms to work in. In every classroom was a cd-player with classical music: Bolero of Ravel, Four Seasons of Vivaldi, the Carneval of the Animals of Camille Saint-Saëns and two more. On the tables big sheets, paint and brushes.

Every first grader came to the sixth graders and asked a student to work with. Each pair was sent to a classroom where they listened to a piece of classical music. By talking together, 'What do you think of while hearing this?' 'What do you feel?' students had to make a painting. One student on the right side, the other on the left side of the sheet. It wasn't nesessary to make one painting, but they might do it. I was all about interpretation of the music.

Marrit (left, grade 6) and Luuk (grade 1) working together on their fishbowls

Students made great artworks together. Some worked together to make one painting, like the one above: two fishbowls, painted while listening to the Four Seasons - Spring of Vivaldi. It is clear the right bowl is painted by the grade 6 student. Other couples chose to paint tow different interpretations, as you can see below.

A great project, worth to give it a try!

Printed birds

You need:

1. white drawing sheet A4 size
2. two potatoes, middle and small size
3. knife
4. sauzer
5. tempera paint
6. piece of corrugated box cardboard  
7. paper towel
8. fine black marker
9. brush
10. watercolour paint

In 'The Usborne Complete Book of Art Ideas' I found this great lesson.

Place a paper towel on a saucer and spray a stripe of brown paint on it. Use the side of a piece of corrugated cardboard of about 7 cm to stamp branches.

Cut the medium potato in half and cut this half again. Stamp the bodies of the birds using red tempera.

Cut the half potato in two pieces. Use the quarter to stamp the tails.
Cut the small potato in half and stamp the faces of the birds.
Clean this half potato with a tissue and cut it in two. Stamp the wings.
Paint beaks, eyes and legs. Leave the work to dry. Paint the background with watercolour paint. Outline the birds with a fine black marker.
To make spring art work, you can add leaves by stamping them, cutting them out of green paper, using real dried leaves or .....use Paint shop pro, like I did!

Fantastic felines like Laurel Burch

You need:

1. pink or purple constrution paper A3 size
2. oilpastels
3. tempera paint
4. brushes
5. gold and silver markers
6. glitter
7. glue

Laurel Burch (1945 –  2007) was an American artist, designer and businesswoman. As a 20-year-old single mother she found metal in junkyards to hammer into jewelry to support her two children, and went on to launch her business, now called Laurel Burch Artworks, in the late 1960s with the help of a small staff that worked out of her house. She began making paintings and was commissioned by restaurants, businesses and private collectors. Burch designed, among other things, beads, jewelry, paintings, T-shirts, scarves, coffee mugs and tote bags, but 90% of her designs derived from her original paintings.

Especially Burch's cats are recognizable. Few some of her paintings on the website of Laurel Burch and discuss the salient features: bright colours, bold pattersn, eyes and nose are drawn out of one line. use of silver and gold.

 

Students draw a cat on purple or pink paper in the style of Laurel Burch. Colour the cat using different materials like tempera, oilpastels, gold and silver markers. Outline the cat with silver or gold. Draw a frame around the artwork. Use glitter to accentuate lines.

All artworks are made by students of grade 5