Art: Week 8

Ari, Desmond, Inez, Gabe, Maya and Zoe

As you may have heard, I took over art atelier for Griffin, and I am extremely excited to learn with the children on this topic! Compare and Contrast is the main topic for Atelier’s for the next 9 weeks (less than that now), and we've been focusing on black and white photos taken by Annie Leibovitz.

During this atelier I finally got to teach room 7 students and I was very excited to explore the art room with them!  This was my second week teach the “little” guys so I was a bit more prepared then last week, however each group is much different. With this group I had the youngest of the young, which concluded in several art activities. And although we were focusing on black and white photos, we were also new to the art studio so we did some exploring. They really enjoyed looking in every drawer and watching the amphibians and fish!

On the first day we looked at the photos and I explained to them how there are a variety of shades ranging from black and white. We poked around at the photos pointing out the “really dark” shades and the “really light” shades and everything in between.  Once I explained to them what we were learning about this week, they were ready to get started!  Our first activity was to focus on a light (white) back ground and forming our photos with black writing utensils (color pencil, charcoal, and/or oil pastel).  This didn't last too long, but once they had made a “photo” we moved onto a new activity which was face painting!!  They really relished this experience and it kept them busy for almost 15 minutes! On the second day, I once again kept the intro simple, short and we reconnoitered the black and white photos again. It was interesting to listen to them explain what they believed was going on in each picture. Following the introduction we gathered material to make black and white photos once again. This time we used a black background (black paper) with white writing tools.  After focusing on black and white photos we then moved to water colors. It was fun to watch and teach the children how to use water colors the correct way.  The following day we mixed black and white tempera paint to make variety shades of grey. They seemed to really enjoy seeing the difference between each shade.  On the last day, we went outside to enjoy some sunshine along with discussing shaded areas vs. non shaded areas. We also snapped a few black and white photos of our own!!

At the end of the week, the children were able to look at the photo and determine whether it had more shades of dark or light. They were also able to compose their own black and white photos using an assortment of materials. Needless to say, we appreciated the photos Annie Leibovitz took and enjoyed constructing our own!