Artist Habits of Mind

• Develop Craft - learn to use tools and materials to create art Engage & Persist - use personal and community subject matter and overcome challenges while making art
  
• Envision - create a mental picture of what you cannot see with your eyes
  
• Express - create artworks that convey a feeling, an idea or a personal meaning
  
• Observe - look carefully and notice new things using all of your senses
  
• Reflect - think and talk about one's artwork and the process of making it
  
• Stretch & Explore - take risks, push yourself and learn from mistakes
  
• Understand the Art World- learn about artists from history and today and art from different cultures. Let them inspire you!

Sample Color Lesson

Enjoy an interactive color lesson from Creativity Express! It's a great resource for parents and teachers to teach kids about art and creativity.
Click on the free lesson section on the right side of the screen.

Warhol portraits

We studied Andy Warhol. He created portraits of famous people and repeated them, often using different color in each image. We draw a portrait of a person or animal and repeated it six times on our paper. Then we carefully painted our images with watercolor paints, making each portrait's colors unique, and outlined them with sharpie. This was a very labor-intensive project and it took us several weeks. One of our big goals was to keep our colors light and see-through.

Frida Kahlo and Imaginary Friends

We learned about the artist Frida Kahlo by reading Frida by Jonah Winter. Frida liked to play with an imaginary friend who was also named Frida. We created pictures of ourselves playing with our imaginary friends. Some of our friends are people and some are animals. 

Van Gogh Sunflowers in Chalk Pastel

We learned about Vincent Van Gogh and his painting about sunflowers. We had real sunflowers to look at when we made our art. We drew what we saw on dark construction paper. Then we went over our pencil lines with white tempera paint. Then we fill in our shapes with chalk pastels and added a background. 

Paper Weaving

We painted two papers with watercolor paints. Then we cut them up to weave them together. One paper, the warp, was cut into vertical strips 1/2 inch wide, connected only at the top of the paper. The other paper, the weft, were cut into horizontal pieces that we wove over and under the warp pieces. This was a very challenging project and took patience and determination. 

Self Portraits in Chalk Pastel

We learned a basic formula for drawing and faces and looked in the mirror at ourselves to create these self portraits. We added color with chalk pastels, working hard to match the color of our eyes, hair and skin by mixing and blending two or more colors.