Practicum Student Exhibition- Matisse Lesson

  

Henri Matisse was a French painter who became very famous for using extraordinarily bold colors. Later in life, as his health began to fail, Matisse turned to making collages. His last and most important works were a collection of mixed-media collages. Matisse arranged boldly colored paper cutouts into striking compositions, and added text in his own handwriting to produce a book that has been referred to as "the visual counterpart of jazz music”.
 
I created an elementary (3rd grade) lesson plan influenced by this period of Matisse work.  My objectives and standards were as follows

Objectives:

1. Students will speculate about the process Matisse uses to create his paper cut outs.
2. Students will learn and apply knowledge of positive and negative space.
3. Students will experiment with forms, media, and art making approaches to create unique and interesting compositions. (organization)

National Arts Standards addressed:

Anchor Standard 7: Perceive and analyze artistic work

Anchor Standard 2: Organize and develop artistic ideas and work.

My students took all their work home and all i have left are the pictures so I decided to showcase them in a slideshow presentation!
 
Click below to see my slideshow of my practicum students work!  Don't mind the music.  I didn't want to have to pay to use my own. 

Henry Matisse Practicum Slideshow

Pinch Pots

We learned to make pinch pots and then were assigned to make them our own using air dry clay.  I was thinking of marine life and sea shells as I created mine.  I created the simple organic shape by pressing my hands inward- the edges on the outside created by my fingers.  I added the barnacles to the outside.  I was very happy with the shape, but wish I had approached the surface (paint) differently.

Find the full tutorial at http://myartisticodyssey.blogspot.com/

Wire Sculptures

As a class we created a circus using wire.  As I was making the seal (the bottom image), my favorite of the two, I tried to come up with a way to portray a seal using the minimum amount of lines possible and am quite happy with the minimal effect.  

http://alexaraemears.blogspot.com/ (Links to an external site.)

Rhythm Sculpture

Although the assignment was to create something non objectual, I wanted to create and abstract forest.  The created smaller trees in the background to create distance and a larger tree coming forward.  I only did one to create emphasis and as not to cover the rest of the picture.  I used the repetition of wood sticks and green leaves to create rhythm. 

Internal Texture- Food Inspired Watercolor techniques

We practiced watercolor techniques with a twist.  We ate food and then practiced painting non objectual things inspired by the food taste and texture.  I started with a cracker (yellow circular shape in top left hand corner) using salt for the texture and turned it into a long cucumber.  I made brownies (top right hand corner and bottom left corner) using the wet and wet technique and used rubbing alcohol to take the color out and add the sprinkles.  I then added tiny squiggles on the outside, to make it appear almost as if you were looking at a germ under a microscope.

For the full tutorial go to http://TayleeMorgan.blogspot.com

Georgia o Keif

We appropriated Georgia o' Kiefs work by drawing contour lines from flowers.  I abandoned the local color of the flower and played with a lot of watercolor techniques here.  For the background I did a wash and put salt in it and for the flower I used a lot of wet in wet technique. 

Find the full tutorial at http://silvermagpieart.blogspot.com/
or http://kidartintheclassroom.blogspot.com/

Weaving

We learned the warp and the weft and then practiced weaving.  We started with a foam plate and cut marks every half inch to put the initial thread into then proceeded to weave.  When I was making mine I was thinking of a Hawaiian mat for sitting in the sand.