Klimt Gold Patterns Collage with Gold Pen

This is a line and pattern project based on the work of Austrian artist Gustav Klimt. He is one of my favourite artists and I love teaching this lesson. 

I start off by showing a slideshow of Klimt's works and we discuss his use of gold and patterns. 

Here's a good video about this work you can show your students. 

I've posted all the specific steps previously HERE.

Start with a magazine image (preferable) of a figure with some skin showing. Cut it out.

Trace around the figure on black paper (8 x 10") then cut away the clothing. Glue down the flesh parts with a glue stick. Using a pencil, sketch out the patterns. Clothing should be intricate and detailed and the background bolder or simpler for contrast. 

We used a variety of gel pens (Pentel and Uniball are very good brands).

 

I also had these gold flakes that I bought from Dollarama a few years ago. Kids LOVE these. Unfortunately, I haven't seen them in stores for a few years. 

Fill in all the patterns with the gold gel pens.

Some finished Grade 10-12 artworks:

Positive Negative Space Plant Drawing

This was a wonderful drawing lesson my second practicum student taught to a mixed class of Grade 7-9 students last month. It was well received among students and yielded a high success rate!

I believe she found the inspo for the project HERE (via Pinterest). 

After her demonstration and explanation of positive and negative space, students looked up an image of a houseplant (some chose flowers) online.

They drew a contour line drawing (no shading) of this on 8 x 11" cardstock. 

Once drawn, they drew a dividing line across the entire image anywhere they wanted- they used a ruler for this step, but some students chose a wavy line. 

They decided which one was their negative space side and outlined that in Sharpie, then coloured the rest in pure black. No lines or details or shading was done on the positive part of that side. 

Just completely black and white.

Once the negative space side was complete, they used painters tape to tape down the negative space side a bit so it wouldn't get any charcoal pencil on it. then they shaded in the positive space side using charcoal pencils. 

I love the variety of these and how beautifully they turned out!

 

Flowers in a Vase Watercolor Painting

This is a classic still life painting lesson that was co-taught by one of my practicum students. 

Her background is not in art, so I suggested this project as it's fairly simple but allows for a lot of creativity for the students. This was taught to a mixed class of Grade 4 - 6 students. 

I found the inspiration from the wonderful Deep Space Sparkle website  HERE and HERE. 

Here is my quick demo showing how to draw a vase/vessel and then a variety of flowers- we also encouraged spring flowers such as tulips and daffodils.

Student drew their good copy on 12 x 18" heavy white paper. 

While the kids were drawing, I kept myself busy with one of my LEAST favourite art room tasks- refilling the liquid watercolours. I saw this sauce cup idea on a blog years ago, but I don't know, I think I need to re-think it. I feel like the paints evaporate so fast. I refill them, then a month later, the containers (with lids) are dried up. Don't get me started on how fast the yellow gets contaminated. 

Anyhoozle, once the kids are finished drawing, they outline everything with sharpie or black wax crayon (everyone chose sharpie). 

Some early starters used the regular pan watercolours, but we switched later to liquid watercolours. 

I gave an brief review and demonstration on how to use these. 

Some finished artworks!