Reward Day

Fourth-grade students have earned free time today.  These are just some of the wonderful works of art created.

5th Grade Zentangles

Science Integration

In this project, we created a mixed media art piece of our solar system.  First, we used a special technique of watercolor painting called "wet on wet" painting to create the background.  This technique is used to create a large area of colors by wetting the paper first and adding wet paint into the water.  This causes lots of color blending and eliminates brushstrokes.  We then added salt onto our wet painted paper.  The salt absorbs the water and the paint pigment to create interesting markings on the paper.  When the painting is dry and the salt is wiped away, the result looks like distant stars.

The second step of our mixed media art piece was to create planets in low relief.  A good example of low relief sculpture is a penny.  Its kind of flat, but still 3D.  We used Crayola Model Magic air dry clay to sculpt our planets.  First we marbleized the clay with color from magic markers, which means we mixed color into the white clay but we didn't mix it in all the way, leaving swirls of color and white.  Then we flattened our clay into circles creating low relief planets.  After they were dry, we arraigned them on our watercolor background paper.

Finally, it was time for finishing touches.  Students made a variety of creative choices- they cut suns out of paper, used oil or chalk pastels, glitter and glue to assemble their accurate yet unique solar system art. They came out beautifully!

Building a city in one day

From time to time, we in the Molin Art Program like to take on 1-day art challenges. The results are always exciting! 

One day, I asked the 4th and 5th grade children to build a city in just one class. Here are some of their solutions:

Silhouettes and Sunsets

Our 4th graders have been learning about trees, and what the work "silhouette" means. We combined that learning with reviewing the primary colors and understanding the color wheel. Then we used wet-on-wet painting techniques to create beautiful beautiful sunsets using only primary colors to make secondary colors

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Illuminated Letters

Our 5th grade artists are learning about illuminated manuscripts, and creating their own illuminated letters on vellum with gold paint! Here are some of their works in progress: 

Molin Art Show!

In conjunction with the Molin Winter Concert, we hung our first art show here at the Molin! This is one of two art shows we plan to have this year. The next will be in the spring. We can't wait!