The Dragon Factory

Third Grade art students are still working on their papier-mache Chinese dragon puppets. They are beginning to paint and add details and should finish up soon!

Dragons, dragons everywhere!

Chinese New Year in the Bradfield Art Room

Third grade and Kindergarten students have both been learning about the tradition of Chinese New Year. 

Third graders are building dragon puppets from papier-mache. They don't look anything like dragons yet, but hopefully in a few weeks they will look more like this:

This week, they are working on building an armature from newspaper and cardboard:

Armatures ready for papier-mache!

According to the Chinese calendar, this year is the Year of the Rabbit.

In Kindergarten art classes, students have been learning how to draw a rabbit!

Happy New Year!

Third Grade Family Paintings

Family is a popular subject matter in artworks by Mary Cassatt, Romare Bearden and Carmen Lomas Garza. Third grade art classes have been expressing their feelings about family and friendship by creating paintings that depict a scene from a family tradition or daily routine.

Here are some of the paintings in progress. They are turning out great!

Dia de Los Muertos

Although the Mexican tradition of Dia de los Muertos and its celebrations look very similar to Halloween, there are actually many differences between the two holidays. Third grade art students have been learning about Dia de los Muertos and about all of the amazing art that surrounds it. They looked at artwork such as calacas, paper flowers and calaveras. 

After seeing all of the bold, colorful Mexican crafts, they were excited to get started on their own Dia de los Muertos artwork!

Here are some of their paintings of calaveras in progress:

Summer Memories...

How is it already time to go back to school? Summer flew by so fast! Well, in art class, we are hanging on to Summer for just a little longer.

Fourth graders have been remembering all of the fun picnics and BBQ they had this Summer while looking at Stephen Frykholm's graphic design posters for the Herman Miller Summer Picnic series. They are learning about how to communicate messages without using words-Not an easy thing to do!

Paul Cezanne and Henri Matisse represented their Summer memories in very different ways:

"Farm in Normandy Summer" by Paul Cezanne

"Swimming Pool" by Henri Matisse

Third graders are drawing pictures of their Summer memories and framing them in a cool pair of shades. A very cute idea I found at That Artist Woman.

I can't wait to see their final designs.
They are having so much fun!