Welcome to a New School Year!

Welcome back, Nelson artists!  I hope that you have all had a wonderfully relaxing summer and that you had some time to do creative things with your families.  We're already hard at work in the art room.  Younger artists and learning about line, shape, and color while our older artists are brushing up their drawing skills and using some exciting new materials.  For the next several weeks, we are lucky to have a teacher candidate from Old Dominion University working with us in the art room.  Mrs. Bouthillet is training to be an art teacher and will be working closely with our Nelson artists until October 19th.  She has some awesome projects in the works so stay tuned for more updates and pictures!  

Have an ART-FULL summer!!!  Take time to sit outside and paint or draw.  Use sidewalk chalk and make a masterpiece on concrete.  Put on a play with your friends.  Write and illustrate a poem.  Use your imagination every day and it will continue to grow and grow....  :)  See you in September....

4th Grade Op Art

Our 4th grade artists studied Optical Art...a style of art that is mean to fool your eyes.  Check out the simple illusions that they were able to create using only line, shape, and colors.

Can you see the illusion of "tunnels" in the two pieces above?

The second piece that we worked on uses a "bull's eye" design and alternating pattern to create the illusion of movement on the page.  

3rd Grade Cupcakes...finished!

First we painted our cupcakes with watercolor paints.  

Then we added a good helping of glitter glue to add a bit of "sprinkles" on top.  These are now keepsake, lidded boxes that look good enough to eat!

5th Grade Clay Gargoyles

Our 5th graders worked hard to create these cute little creatures.  The basic form starts with a pinch pot and then the students used their imaginations to add eyes, tongues, claws, wings, etc...  A good glazing really makes them pop with color.  

Gargoyle...or alien?

Look at those wings!

A trio of cuties!  

First Grade's Sparkly Pinch Pots

Check out these pinch pots our first graders created! They had a great time working on them. First they had to "pinch" their clay into the shape of a bowl. We added decorations using a variety of stamping tools. After they were fired, we painted them with watercolor paints and finally added a nice "glaze" of glitter glue all over. They are glitzy and beautiful! Great job, first grade artists!

3rd Grade Organic "Melt-Art" Sculptures

These amazing "melted" sculptures began life as a plain old plastic cup. After adding a bit of colored permanent marker and a bit of toaster oven "magic"....they were transformed into very unique organic sculptures. Each artist's piece is a little different than everyone else's, which we love! This lesson builds on a previous lesson in which our third graders learned about the artist, Henri Matisse and his love of organic and geometric shapes.