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.