Kindergarten Art ExplorationCBI Preschool & KindergartenSpring 2013

Week One: Symbols, Shapes and

SignsClass Rules Using Symbols

Name PinsUsing symbols to tell people who we are and what we like

Symbols and Signs

Did you know that symbols are just pictures that communicate ideas?

Artists worked in groups to brainstorm and draw symbols that best represented our kindergarten class.

After we drew our symbols, we explained our drawings to the rest of the class.

Symbols and Signs:Personal Flags

After looking at and discussing the US flag, the Virginia State flag, and even some pirate flags, we designed our own flags with words and symbols.

Symbols and Signs:Personal Flags

Using symbols and colors, we each designed our own personal flags with fabric markers and white cotton.

Shapes and a Flag for Fuzzy

Did you know that there are two basic types of shapes in art? We compared and created ORGANIC and GEOMETRIC shapes by cutting with fun scissors to design a flag for Fuzzy the class bear.

Symbols and Signs:Family Flags

Who ever heard of homework for art? Yep, it’s true! Kindergarten artists worked with their families to create a Family Flag that used symbols to represent their cultural heritage, hobbies, favorite foods, and even places they love to visit.

Week 2:Community and ArtWe started our week with a fun visit from local mosaic artist Ninni Baeckstrom.

Ninni’s Visit

Community Art with a Visiting Artist

Ninni’s art incorporates her love of mosaics and is often large-scale. One of her most well-loved sculptures can be seen at its permanent home on the lawn at McGuffey Art Center.

Week 2: Watercolor Techniques

In art, a technique is another trick we can learn and practice to create new art. For our fish project, we learned six new watercolor techniques: straw painting, plastic wrap, resist with crayon, salt, graded wash, and sponge painting.

More Messing Around with Watercolors

A School of Watercolor FishUsing our new watercolor technique knowledge, we brainstormed the many types of fish we might see in the ocean.

A School of Watercolor Fish

Using the resist, salt, and wet-on-wet techniques to create the fish.

Week 3: Gallery Visit How lucky we are to live and play in a place with so many talented artists making art! This week, we walked to nearby Firefish gallery to visit with artist Sigrid Eilertson. Sigrid shared her amazing masks and animal paintings with us, and we even got to try on some of her art!

Masks at Firefish Gallery

Week 3: Portraiture and Facial Proportion

*Did you know that your face is five eyes wide? Your ears are as long as the distance between your eyebrows and the bottom of your nose? Your eyes are halfway down the front of your head?

Kindergarten artists use themselves and each other as models as they learned to draw the human face step-by-step.

Class Portraits in Pencil

Mood Portraits After reading some books for inspiration about feelings and emotions, artists drew oil pastel portraits to communicate a

mood they were feeling.

Mood Portraits

*An artist’s most convenient model is often herself or himself. We took a peek at some famous artists and their self-portraits to create one-of-a-kind mood portraits for this project.

Adding watercolor to communicate a mood or feeling.

Another Detour to McGuffey Art Center

Kindergarten artists took a side trip to see some very colorful portraits in paint, where we discussed colors, expressions, and moods that we felt when we looked at the art.

Week 4: Wild Beasts of Color

Making the

Beasts:drawing

monsters with colored

pencil on black paper.

We researched lots of different monsters and wild things in books to create our own “wild beasts”.

Field Research: How to Make a Jungle in Two Easy

Steps

Step 1. Trace leaves from our scavenger hunt in the park.

Field Research: How to Make a Jungle in Two Easy

Steps

Step 2. Draw real leaves from observation.

Texture Jungles

Making the Leaves: using different objects

as brushes to paint

TEXTURE on paper

for leaves.

Texture JunglesMaking

the Leaves:

using different objects as brushes to

paint TEXTURE on paper for

leaves.

Making the

Leaves: trace shapes, cut out, and

glue together for jungles.

Texture Jungles

And Now for a Brief Interlude….

Celebrating 100th day with a Fingerprint Critter Parade

Weeks 5 and 6: Neighborhood Architecture

Where else can you find a great building to draw but in your own front yard? Kindergarten artists were introduced to simple shapes in architecture by tracing the CBI Synagogue from across the street…

Week 5: Neighborhood Architecture

…and then, we moved in for a closer view of building details from the gate and steps.

Neighborhood Architecture: Building BuddiesThe goal of the architecture unit was to help kindergarten artists see that many parts can make up the whole. We learned it’s a lot easier to design and build a house, temple, skyscraper, or tower when you know how to put simple shapes and forms together.

Building BuddiesWorking in pairs to build a structure.

Building Buddies

The hard part came next: drawing what we built. It’s not always simple to draw 3D

forms, but our efforts paid off!

Home Sweet Home: Relief Print Houses

For our neighborhood prints, we used self-adhesive foam shapes to “build” a printing plate. With this type of printmaking, the

surface of the plate has high and low points on the surface, called “relief”.

Home Sweet Home: Relief Print Houses

Once we “built” the plates, we inked them and pressed paper on top. Using our fingertips, we transferred the inked image to the paper to make a print.

Home Sweet Home: Relief Print Houses

Edible Architecture:The Tallest Tower

Our final architecture project combined teamwork, pasta and marshmallows (!) to create some delicious designs that stuck with us.

Edible Architecture:

The Tallest Tower

Weeks 7 and 8:What IS a MURAL?

Kindergarten artists learned about some famous and familiar murals with Sam. Some of the most exciting examples we saw were the ones right here in Charlottesville!

Field Research:On the Hunt for Public Art

Before we could get down to the business of creating our own work of art for the CBI community, we needed a little more background information…

Setting off on a hunt for examples of art in our CBI neighborhhod.

Public Art WalkOur journey took us down side streets…

The THUMB!

Amazing inked animal drawing!

Public Art Walk…and onto the Downtown Mall…

Public Art Walk…where we spied the most AMAZING place to make art and communicate with others…

1st Amendment Chalkwall

Public Art: Chalk Wall1st Amendment Chalk

Wall

Chalk Hands Inspired by the

1st Amendment Wall

Artists used stencils and a new wiping technique with chalk pastels to create hand silhouettes.

Chalk Hands

Inspired by the

1st Amendment Wall

Field Research:One More MuralThere’s a happy mural where we play every day…have you ever noticed the mosaic mural at McGuffey Park?

First we drew the images we saw in the mural and then made crayon rubbings of the donors’ names and mosaic tiles.

Bruchim Habayim: “Welcome, we are blessed by your presence.”

This is a common Hebrew way to say “welcome”, and it’s the theme for our mural.

After acting out “welcoming” situations, we sketched our ideas for images of welcome for the mural.

Painting the Mural

Presenting the Kindergarten Mural at CBIA sneak peek of our creation!

Thank you for sharing in our artistic journey!

With Very Special Thanks….This special project would not have been possible without the very generous financial support of Santina Zanelli and David Kaufman, parents of Ilana and Gabrielle.

Funded in loving memory of Grandpa Karl Kaufman, who loved what was special in each child.