Piet Mondrian Art Critiques

All grades have been learning about the famous artist Piet Mondrian to reinforce the concepts of lines, geometric shapes, primary colors, and to incorporate art history. As a part of their study, all students had to choose which of his works, out a limited set of three, they preferred the most. They chose from Composition London, Broadway Boogie-Woogie, and Windmill in Sunlight. Kinder through Third Grade verbally chose and shared with a partner which they preferred and why. Fourth and Fifth Grade wrote their preferences down in the form of a written art critique. The students had to use the elements of art previously learned to explain their choice. The written art critiques were added next to the artworks' poster on our Visual Arts bulletin board. (There are no close-ups of the art critiques because they indicate the student's names and grade levels.)

Piet Mondrian Paintings: Fifth Grade

All grades have been learning about the famous artist Piet Mondrian to reinforce the concepts of lines, geometric shapes, primary colors, and to incorporate art history. As a part of their study, Fifth Grade painted pictures inspired by Broadway Boogie-Woogie. Each student started their painting by drawing two parallel lines from the top of the paper to the bottom with the aid of a ruler. They then repeated this step but horizontally. They then continued by drawing other parallel lines off of those two main lines. After designing the layout of their paintings, they painted in the squares created by the intersections of the parallel lines with two different primary colors. The remaining lines were painted in the third primary color.

Piet Mondrian Paintings: Fourth Grade

All grades have been learning about the famous artist Piet Mondrian to reinforce the concepts of lines, geometric shapes, primary colors, and to incorporate art history. As a part of their study, Fourth Grade painted pictures inspired by Tableau No. IV, 1925. But instead of creating vertical and horizontal lines on a diamond created by diagonal lines, they did the opposite. The students used rulers to draw various intersecting diagonal lines. They then painted in the shapes created by those lines with primary colors leaving some spaces white for a pop.

Piet Mondrian Paintings: Third Grade

All grades have been learning about the famous artist Piet Mondrian to reinforce the concepts of lines, geometric shapes, primary colors, and to incorporate art history. As a part of their study, Third Grade painted pictures inspired by Composition London. Using rulers, the students drew vertical and horizontal lines and painted them black. They then painted in the squares and square rectangles created by those lines with primary colors leaving some shapes white.

Piet Mondrian Collages: Second Grade

All grades have been learning about the famous artist Piet Mondrian to reinforce the concepts of lines, geometric shapes, primary colors, and to incorporate art history. As a part of their study, Second Grade created a Mondrian inspired collage with primary colors, horizontal and vertical lines, and geometric shapes. The students got a piece of construction paper in the three primary colors. They two of the papers in vertical strips. With one set of the strips, they cut them into small square rectangle pieces. They glued the strips into vertical and horizontal lines on the third piece of paper. They then glued the rectangular pieces onto the intersections of those vertical and horizontal lines. This lesson was loosely based on New York City I, 1942.

 

 

Piet Mondrian Collages: First Grade

All grades have been learning about the famous artist Piet Mondrian to reinforce the concepts of lines, geometric shapes, primary colors, and to incorporate art history. As a part of their study, First Grade created a Mondrian inspired collage with primary colors and geometric shapes. They folded a black piece of paper into eight parts. They then glued two primary colored squares or square rectangles in each section starting with the largest. After they glued two shapes per section, they had to figure out which primary color was missing and glue that missing color in the middle with the smallest shape. This step was purposely done separately to promote critical thinking and problem solving. This lesson was inspired by Composition C but definitely with a twist!

Piet Mondrian Collages: Kinder

All grades have been learning about the famous artist Piet Mondrian to reinforce the concepts of lines, geometric shapes, primary colors, and to incorporate art history. As a part of their study, Kindergarten created two different Mondrian inspired collages. The first collage was to glue white strips of paper vertically and horizontally on black paper. They then glued primary colored squares and square rectangles on the white strips. On the second collage, they glued black strips of paper on narrow white paper. They then glued primary colored squares and rectangles of larger sizes in the white spaces. Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow was the inspiration for these pieces.

Trees in Moonlight: Fourth Grade

Fourth Grade students practiced creating tints and shades by adding white or black to blue tempera paint. Starting with the tint, they painted a full moon on construction paper. They then used the blue hue to paint a ring around it. They then used the shade to paint the rest of the paper in a circular shape. In the pictures, they outside looks more black than it really is. After painting, they cut out a tree on black paper and glued it to their moon background to create positive and negative space.

Dinosaurs: Third Grade

Third Grade performed "Dinostars" for the monthly PTA program. To go along with their program, they created dinosaur art. They first painted the sky background using orange, yellow, and purple. They then added a dinosaur in black construction  paper to the sky background to create positive and negative space.

Cool Color Birds: Second Grade

Second Grade students created a sky background with grass by painting only with cool colors. With the help of tracers, they cut out various sized and shaped black birds. They also cut strips of black paper to represent grass. They glued their birds and grass to the sky and grass background to create positive and negative space silhouettes.

Second and Third Grade Murals

On Fridays, we have "Collaborative Art Fridays." Monday through Thursday, I teach the main focus lesson and the students create artwork individually. Each group will visit art on average about one Friday per month according to our rotation schedule. So, on these days, the students work on a collaborative project that incorporates the art elements we have been working on during that month. For this lesson, the students worked to trace various geometric shapes on white bulletin board paper. They then connected the shapes to one another and the edges of the paper with various lines to create organic shapes. They then painted in the shapes. As they worked, we talked about balance and the need to space the colors out in work like this. These really add a pop of color to our neutral back hallway!

Fourth and Fifth Grade Murals

On Fridays, we have "Collaborative Art Fridays." Monday through Thursday, I teach the main focus lesson and the students create artwork individually. Each group will visit art on average about one Friday per month according to our rotation schedule. So, on these days, the students work on a collaborative project that incorporates the art elements we have been working on during that month. For this lesson, the students crumpled pieces of white bulletin board paper into a ball. They then worked to trace all of the wrinkles, or lines, with black Sharpie Markers. They then painted in the organic shapes created by the lines with Tempera Paint. I love how these turned out!

Warm and Cool Waves: Fifth Grade

Fifth Grade demonstrated their knowledge of warm and cool colors by creating wave patterns. They first used a ruler to create a grid. They then drew waves on top of the grid. As they did this, we reviewed the differences between geometric and organic shapes. The students traced their lines in black marker. They then colored the grid in a warm color pattern. They then colored the waves in a cool color pattern.

Beauty Is In The Eye of the Beholder: Fifth Grade

In Fifth Grade we talked about the importance of art critiques but that ultimately, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We discussed what this saying meant. The students then drew the outline of an eye and then traced bowls to create pupils. They then divided the pupil into six parts. They traced all of their drawing with a black Cray-pas. They then colored in the pupil to look like a basic color wheel with the Cray-pas. They then drew details like eye lashes and eyebrows.

Zentangle Color Wheels: Fourth Grade

Fourth Grade learned about the art of Zentangles. Using various handouts as inspirations and their own knowledge of lines, the students drew various Zentangle creations into sections of a color wheel they drew with rulers. They traced their lines with markers and colored in the color wheel sections with crayons.

Cool and Warm Hands: Third Grade

Third Grade students created patterns with geometric shapes and cool/warm colors. To integrate math, students had to find either a square or circle that covered the most area. They traced that shape and then found the same shape but with less area. They traced the shape and then repeated this step until they got to the shape that covered the least area. Once their shapes were traced, they traced their handprint in the middle. They then colored the geometric shapes in a pattern of either warm or cool colors. They colored the handprint in the opposite set of colors. For display, I grouped them into warm and cool colors.

Raining Colors: Second Grade

With the aid of rulers, second grade drew a top view of umbrellas divided into six sections. They colored each section in order of the color wheel. They then drew basic geometric shapes under the umbrella to form a raincoat and boots. They also drew organic shapes of raindrops and a puddle.

Cool and Warm Birds: First Grade

First Grade drew birds using basic 2D shapes. They drew their birds sitting on straight lines like wires. For each bird, we talked about how you can change the way the birds look by moving just the position of their beaks and eyes. Some birds were drawn looking up, some were drawn looking to the side, and some were drawn looking straight forward. After tracing their drawings in black, the students painted one row in cool colors and one row in warm colors using liquid water colors.

A Rainbow of Friends: First Grade

First Grade read A Rainbow of Friends by P.K. Hallinan as a connection to creating our class Social Contract and as an introduction to the color wheel, primary colors, and secondary colors. Each student used various shaped foam stamps to paint shapes in color wheel order. The next week, once the paint was dry, they used multicultural markers to add heads, arms, and legs to the shapes. They then added basic facial features, hair, and shoes to match the shapes.

Mouse Paint: Kindergarten

Kindergarten read Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh to learn about primary colors and the secondary colors created by mixing those colors. After reading the book, the students used mouse shaped tracers to draw six mice in a circular shape. They then traced the mice in black markers. They then added eyes and tails with spiral lines. Next the students painted in each mouse in color wheel order with liquid water colors.