Catching leaves

What do you need?

• drawing sheet 
• oil pastels
• liquid watercolor paint
• brushes

What should you do?

1. Trace your hand (thumbs point to each other) on the bottom of the sheet.
2. Color them with oil pastels. 
3. Draw swirling autumn leaves above the hands and color those with oil pastels. 
4. Paint the background with diluted liquid watercolor paint leaving some space on the edges.
5. Or: 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

What do you need?

• white drawing sheet
• tissue paper in autumn colors
• brush
• jar with water
• white crayons

Before
Look at different shapes of autumn leaves. Discuss shapes and colors. 

What should you do?

1. Draw different leaves on the sheet with white crayon. 
2. Tear parts of tissue paper (not too small) in autumn colors. 
3. 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.

   4. Let the artwork dry a little. 
   5. When it's still moist a bit, pull of the tissue paper. You can use tweezers           to avoid colored fingers! 

Works of art made by students of grade 3. 

Autumn leaves in cubist style

What do you need?

• white drawing sheet 
• pencil
• ruler
• tempera paint
• brushes
• gold marker

Before
Ask students to take autumn leaves. Watch them together, paying particular attention to the shape: heart-shaped, oval, round, oblong, etc. The composition of the leaves may vary: a leave can be single or composed of several leaflets (pinnate or palmately).

What should you do?

1. Draw several leaves, they may not overlap. Draw half leaves against the edges. Draw only the outer form of the leaves, no veins. 
2. If the sheet is largely filled, draw diagonal lines with pencil and ruler: two from left to right and two from top to bottom. Make sure these lines pass through the leaves. 
3. Choose four warm colors tempera: two for the leaves and two for the background. Paint the leave parts within a shape in one color and the background in a different one. Paint the leaves in the next square in a third color and the background with color four. 
4. Trace contour lines of the leaves and the diagonal lines with a gold marker.

Works of art made by students of grade 6.

Whirling leaves

What do you need?

• white drawing sheet 
• watercolor paint
• brushes
• jar with water
• small and thick black marker
• construction paper for background
• glue

Before
Ask students to take flat dried leaves. 

What should you do?

1. Chooses a leave and outline it several times with a pencil. Let them whirl down from the tree. Make sure some leaves go over the edge; these will later be finished on the background.
2. Paint the leaves with watercolor paint. Use water to dillute the paint less or more. Choose warm fall colors and try to make transitions in the colors by using wet in wet technique.
3. Paint the background blue. Use again the wet in wet technique, and/or choose for wet on dry. You don't have to paint exactly against the leaves, they will be outlined later.
4. Leave the work to dry and paste it on a colored background. 
5. Outline the leaves with a thick black marker. Use the fine marker for the veins. Don't stop with outlining and drawing veins when you reach the background, but go on with it there.

Works of arde made by students of grade 6.

Autumn leaves mandala

What do you need?

• white drawing sheet 
• compasses
• pencil
• oil pastels

What should you do?

1. Draw a circle with a diameter of 20 cm. 

2. Draw within about 1 cm another circle (the edge of the mandala).
3. Cut out and fold into 8 pieces.
4. Draw against one of the folds half a leaf with black oil pastel.

5. Fold the sheet and press firmly with your hand to get a print of the leaf on the other side of the fold. Trace this half leaf with black oilpastel. 

7. Draw the other leaves in the same way.
8. Color leaves and background with oil pastels. Color the edge with a nice pattern.

Artworks made by students of grade 6.

It's warm blanket time!

What do you need?

• colored paper for background
• brown paper 
• leftovers of colored and white paper 
• square white paper
• watercolor paint + brushes
• crayons
• black marker
• scissors and glue

Before
Divide this lesson over more moments. Consider in advance whether you will give students a template of the bear's head or whether they' ll have to draw it themselves. 

What should you do?

Folding and painting: 

1. For the blanket: fold the white sheet into16 squares. 
2. Paint each square in a different color. 
3. Let dry. 
4. Draw stripes with a crayon on the folds of the squares like on a patchwork blanket. 

Cutting:

1. Draw a bear's head on brown paper and cut out (or trace the template and cut out)
2. Legs: cut four ovals out of brown paper. 
3. Snout: cut a circle out of colored paper. 
4. Ears: cut two half circles out of colored paper. 
5. Eyes: cut two small circles out of white paper. 

Pasting and drawing:

1. Stick the hind legs on the colored sheet. 
2. Stick the blanket so that legs come out from underneath.
3. Stick the head halfway on the blanket and the front legs underneath.  
4. Stick snout, eyes and ears on the head.
5. Draw nose, whiskers and pupils with a black marker. 

Works of art made by students of grade 1.  

Just like Bart van der Leck

About the artist

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 Mondrian works directly from abstraction. 

Instruction
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. They may not 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?

• action photo of an athlete
• black sheet and a half white sheet
• scraps of paper in red, yellow and blue 
• scissors and glue

What should you do?

1. Paste the action photo of an athlete 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. 
3. Satisfied? Glue them.
4. Glue the white sheet below the photo on the the black sheet. 

Artworks made by students of grade 3.