Lines, Patterns, Hopes and Dreams

 The first couple of weeks have already flown by! In the fourth grade we learned about Mexican contemporary artist Indi Maverick and her animals wearing fancy clothes portraits:
indimaverick.com/
We learned how she uses the element LINE to create detailed textures that mimic the fur of animals. Before we began our animal portraits we started practicing blind contour drawing, which is when you draw an object from observation without lifting your pencil off of the page, OR looking down at your paper. This exercise is helpful for learning how to draw and accurately depicting objects through observation. We used doilies to frame our fancy animals when they were done- simply stunning!  

In the fifth grade we learned about  Navajo artist Gilmore Scott and his use of PATTERN and SYMBOLS to show his heritage and reference the landscape he is surrounded by. We began work on our Name Hope and DreamCatchers  by coming up with symbols that represent our own hopes/dreams and goals for the future. Every student is working on creating a dream-catcher design, using the letters of their first names to create a repeated pattern and including those symbols that represent individual goals. I am loving the creativity and unique designs I am seeing so far!