Second Grade Art

Ravinia Second Grade Art Thus Far...

Now that I have my blog up and running, I am going to show you what we've been up to so far this year.  It's been an exciting year so far!  Students created a chalk pastel seashell still-life, a dry-brush painting inspired by the art of Chris Raschka and a colored pencil pumpkin dip-tych.

Ravinia's Seashell Contour Line Drawings

Have you ever tried contour drawing? It's created when you put your pencil on the paper to draw a picture and you can't pick it up until the picture is finished. It's very challenging, but these second grade students took on that challenge and created some amazing sea life inspired drawings!

When they completed their drawings they traced them with marker and filled them in with chalk pastel. Students used liquid watercolors to spray paper for the background.

Pumpkin Dip-Tych

What's a diptych?

Why are you displaying jack-o-lanterns in January?

Great questions!  A diptych is a 2 panel painting usually hinged together.  The objective of this project was to teach students the method of positive/negative transfer using tracing paper.  We began examining different pumpkin faces from the book Play With Your Food by Joost Elffers.

Using these faces for inspiration, we designed our jack-o-lanters.  We examined a real pumpkin and used it as a guide for our drawing.  When the drawing and tracing portion of this project was completed we used many layers of colored pencils to create a three-dimensional effect. The last step was to use a variety of papers to create a background.  They are currently on display in the second grade hallway!

We're displaying them in January because we decided to take a break from them in October to make our Simple Gifts project and used our time in December to finish them.  Perhaps we should have added some snow to our pictures too!

Simple Gifts

Students were introduced to the book, Simple Gifts, in art class. They carefully examined author Chris Raschka’s style of illustration from his heavy black lines to his lighter more expressive brush strokes. We discussed simplification in art and how to find the fundamental shapes that make up all living creatures.

After our discussions students were instructed to choose their subject matter: flora or fauna. They drew their pictures first, outlined them with black oil pastel, and completed them with tempera paints mixed to match the colors used in Raschka’s illustrations. Students worked very hard to capture the style Chris Raschka by using a limited amount of paint and a dry brush technique. They were displayed for our recent first and second grade show.