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Patterns and Pointillism

I've noticed that my last few post titles have had an overflow of alliteration, and I quite enjoy it! 

Moving on, I want to share two new art projects that I've done with my Grade 4's.  The first is a pattern project that we did at the end of our patterns unit in math.  I found the inspiration from the blog Kid Artists, but changed it up a bit.

First, we started by drawing wavy lines across the page vertically and horizontally.

Next, in each of the spaces, draw an "X," making sure to reach all four corners of the space.


 
Once you have all the X's drawn, choose four colours.  The bottom space of all of the X's should be one colour.  The tops will be another colour.  The lefts will be a third colour, and the rights will be the last colour. 

The wavier you draw your lines, the more distorted the pattern becomes.  They turned out beautifully!











 
The second project was inspired by the pop artist Roy Lichtenstein.  I introduced the technique of pointillism to my class by showing them several paintings that featured pointillism.  We then looked at the art of Lichtenstein, specifically his comic book-style art with pointillism.

I challenged my Grade 4's to draw their own self portraits, featuring the technique.  They were allowed to choose one or two features to colour in solidly, and colour the rest using dots.  For this project, they used markers.  I had originally planned to use paints, but due to time constraints and lack of materials, markers worked in a pinch. 

Here is my example portrait:
 
I gave them their school photos to work from.  They drew simple outlines, then filled in the colour using dots.  I love how they turned out!
 




 


 

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