Blue Dogs: Created by 4th Grade, Inspired by George Rodrigue

4th grade students were introduced to Blue Dog artist George Rodigue.  

After learning about his life and art and inspiration for Blue Dog, they created their own version of Blue Dog using many different materials.  

First Grade Sunflowers

Author Laurence Anholt has a series of children's books based on famous artists in history and I use many of his books from the series in my art curriculum.  For this lesson, first grade students were introduced to Vincent Van Gogh with "Van Gogh and the Sunflowers" from this series.

Van Gogh and the Sunflowers Book

At the end of the book, Vincent Van Gogh gives the main character a painting of sunflowers, one of his most famous paintings in history.

After discussing the color, shape, texture, and space elements of Van Gogh's Sunflower painting, students begin to create their own sunflowers using tempera paint and oil pastels.  Here are a few finished masterpieces!!

5th Grade Sidewalk Artists

My family and I took a trip to Germany and Italy this summer and I spent the first few days of art class showing my students a slide show of our trip. One of the pictures from Florence, Italy was a street artist recreating a famous Renaissance painting with sidewalk chalk for money. After a long discussion on WHY the artist chooses to do this, one of my students said, "I wish we could do this here at school!"

What a great idea! Students first picked their own famous painting and we practiced recreating their paintings in the classroom before picking a sunny day to work outside our main entrance to school.

The students were impressed with their finished products and other grade levels are now asking to do it also. I think it was a success!  Here are some snapshots from the day.

Picasso Inspired Guitars

6th grade students at our school are learning how to play the guitar in music.  Pablo Picasso was known for incorporating musical instruments into his artwork, especially during his cubism period.  I found this was a perfect opportunity to connect visual art to music.  

Students first were introduced to Picasso's life and artwork, especially his cubism period.  Students explored the style of cubism and through a discussion defined what cubism means.  

Next, students drew their own guitars by hand and completed their drawing with oil pastels.  We reviewed the different parts of the guitar that they were learning about in music class, including neck, body, sound hole, and head.  Students then used watercolor paints on their background paper in a design of their choice.  Finally the 6th grade students cut up their guitars into many pieces and rearranged them on the watercolored paper.  Here are some examples of finished work! 

4th Grade Blue Dogs

Who doesn't love a little George Rodrigue?  The 4th grade classes had a great discussion about this living artist and the history of how Blue Dog came to be.  My students had many questions about the Bayou and the Loup-Garou.  We also watched a video on George Rodrigue that showed him painting one of his many Blue Dog paintings.

I challenged the students to create their own Blue Dogs in the most unique setting they could think of, and that their dog did not have to be blue!

Here are some of their creations: