West Milwaukee 6th grade Album Covers and Pop Art Portraits

Sixth grade students were lead through an incredible painting/portrait lesson by our very talented student teacher, Ms. Richardson.

Ms. Richardson showed the students many examples of artistic album covers, and pop art portraits. Students were limited to four colors, with black being the final addition. Composition, symbolism, and color placement were all important consideration in these fantastic paintings.

At the end of the project, the class participated in a positive peer critique, or "gallery walk" as we call it. It's always encouraging to see and hear kids at this age be able to appreciate eachother's talents.

 

WMIS -7th Grade Pop Art Prints

The 7th graders worked hard on creating styrofoam prints based on popular brands that are marketed directly to their age demographic. They researched logos and created simple, eye-catching designs. We studied pop artists, including the famous Andy Warhol, and their use of bold-flat color and repetition. Students had learn correct printing craftsmanship, were allowed to explore with many different colors of ink and paper. We mounted the works in groups of four and labeled our work. The last step was the addition of oil pastels, for an extra *pop* of color. Extra credit was offered to students who wanted to create their own product and logo. 

 

2nd/3rd grade Recycled Fish

2nd/3rd grade Recycled Fish

Step 1: Students used various sizes and shapes of plastic bottles as the body of the fish and attached recycled cardboard for the fins. Daniel is hard at work!

Step 2: Hannah and Isaiah are using water/glue mixture to add different colored tissue paper to their fish.

Seeraj is in the process of adding color to his fish.

Step 3: Students used Model Magic clay to add the eyes to their fish.

Here are a few examples of our finished recycled fish projects!

Monet Flowers at Mitchell

Students (2/3graders) are learning about the life and art of Monet. Students learned about his love of painting outdoors and that many of his works included images of flowers. Students are working hard painting papers that soon will be cut and formed into 3d flowers.

WMIS- Animal Eye Drawings

7th graders just finished their close-up, animal eye drawings.  The main focus of this art project was to look closely, and draw what you see and not what you know.  The students worked on enlargement and proportions.  In addition, they tried really hard to blend colors by overlapping colored pencils.  Great work 7th graders!

March is Youth Art Month

March is a time to celebrate the arts in education! Art promotes the 21st century skills: communication, critical thinking, collaboration, and creativity. The West Allis-West Milwaukee School schools have a wonderful array of artwork on display at the administration building and the alternative learning center. If you have a chance, stop by to see all of the creative art done by kindergarten through high school aged students.

Students and families are invited to attend the opening reception on Sunday March 3rd from 1:00-4:00 pm. Hope to see you there!

Where the wild things are...

K5 students at Pershing Elementary created collaborative art after reading the book 'Where the Wild Things Are'. Each student made a tree and their very own wild thing. They loved getting to use their own wild side for inspiration!

Brrrrrrrrrrrrr.........It's Snowy Self-Portrait Time!

Allie's self-portait

Mina's self-portrait

2nd and 3rd grade students learned about self-portraits.  A self-portrait is when an artist paints or draws a picture of themselves.  Students looked at a variety of examples of self-portraits created by different artists such as; Vincent Van Gogh, Grant Wood, and Chuck Close.  It was the perfect time of year to create a picture of ourselves outside in the snow!  We used a collage method to do a winter background.  Look at these wonderful examples done by Mina and Allie!    

WMIS 6th Grade Contour Line Shoe Drawings

The 6th graders learned about descriptive, contour line drawings.  They practiced drawing their own shoes from life.  They gained a lot of confidence in their drawing abilities by drawing directly what they saw.  Many commented that they didn't know they could draw as well as they did.  They then turned their realistic controur line drawings, into surreal fantasies.

Art Foundations: Tripod Ceramic Mugs!

Art Foundations students at Nathan Hale High School had a lot of fun with this unit! Our focus was incorporating texture and design into clay, and turning that into a functional vessel. 

The texture featured on these mugs was created from a screen.

We started by rolling out slabs of clay, and cutting them to the right size. Next, we carefully rolled and pressed different textural pieces into the soft slab. That slab was then formed into a cylinder, scored and slipped together (clay's way of staying attached), and shaped the bottom of the mug into a tripod.

These were dried thoroughly, bisque fired in the kiln, glazed, and then fired one more time. 

These were finished the day before Winter Break. We celebrated with hot chocolate-served in our handmade mugs!

Cheers!

Proud of our work.

Planets in the Art Room at Pershing!

Paper Mache Madness

Working in Planet Groups

Here at Pershing Elementary, third and fourth graders are working on their solar system inquiry unit in their classroom. Students brought their expertise to the Art Room!

We discussed the importance of scale in three-dimensional artwork. Since we can't make life-sized planets, we had to create them to scale. Planets were made using paper mache, and then painted to mimic the actual surface of the planet.

Uranus in the making!

This solar system will be on display for the entire school to see. We labeled each planet, and wrote out two fun facts for each one. This is our way of educating other Pershing students about our planets.

Finding some fun facts about our planets.

Stay tuned to see our final display! It's sure to be out of this world!

Happy Holidays from Pershing Artists!

Seasons' Greetings from Pershing! Our Winter Sing was a few weeks ago in our gym, and first and second graders were in charge of decorations! We made jumbo-sized Christmas lights and painted them in with bright tempera paint. They were strung together and displayed on the curtain behind singers. It was a wonderful concert, with great decorations!

Art in the Community

There is holiday art on display at West Allis City Hall for the month of December. Each school in the district has art pieces on display. This is a wonderful exhibit of art from all grade levels. What a great way of showing the community the importance of having the arts in schools!

An opening reception to celebrate the work will be on Tuesday, December 4th from 6:00-7:00pm.

8th Grade Scratch Art at WMIS

The 8th graders just finished their cropped, nature-inspired, scratch art projects.  This may be one of the most impressive projects I've seen so far.  I knew the project would be challenging for the kids, because it requires them to think almost backwards.  They are reductively scratching away at black to reveal white.  Prior to starting the project, we worked on cross-hatching and using lines to create value.  We also discussed cropping and it's use in composition.  I am absoloutely blown away by the quality of work the 8th graders created.

Turkey Time!



Students learned about warm and cool colors.

Students chose to color a coffee filter using only the warm or only the cool colors.

After we finished coloring, we sprayed the coffee filter with water and watched what happened when water mixed with marker. Wow, look at the result!

We then cut and glued the other parts of the turkey. Here is a warm colored turkey example.

This is a cool colored turkey example.

7th grade water colors with trees

Recently Lincoln 7th graders studied the artist Tom McCracken.  They made reproductions of his work using crayon, water colors, and black acrylic paint.  They all turned out very unique.

WMIS donates Day of the Dead Art to the VA

Here at West Milwaukee Intermediate, we are only a few blocks from the midwest's largest and oldest Veteran Affair's hospitals. On occasion, we have the honor of lending our artworks to them for special celebrations. This year, the VA is hosting a "Day of the Dead" or "Dia de los Muertos" for the veterans. The 6th grade art students were more than happy to permenantly donate some of their "Dia" skull prints to such deserving neighbors.

Polish Ornaments

8th grade Geometry students at Lincoln created these beautiful Polish Paper Ornaments.  They took the ornaments and decorated a tree in Down Town Milwaukee at Cathedral Square Park.  The best part about these ornaments was the collaboration between the students and the connections between math and art that the students got to experience!