Blue Dog

Throughout all of the grade levels one things that I focus on teaching again and again is teaching students to draw using basic shapes that they know and are familiar with. For our most recent project in first and second grade we looked at the artist George Rodrigue and his paintings of Blue Dog as inspiration.

We started off by reading Why Is Blue Dog Blue? by George Rodrigue and Bruce Goldstone, students looked at the illustrations and identified all the basic shapes that they knew and could use to help them draw their own blue dog such as oval, circle, rectangle and triangle. 

After completing several planning sketches students moved onto larger final drafts; drawing blue dog then adding in a background from their imagination. Lastly students painted their blue dog. 

Blue Dog at a Museum 

1st Grade Paul Cézanne Still Life

We're already getting back into the swing of things here in the art room. This week the first grade classes have started a new project inspired by the art of Cézanne and his style of breaking everything down into basic shapes. This is a strategy that students will use again and again in drawing. When they find the basic shapes, they can fit them together to make more complicated drawings. 

After reading a book about Cézanne and looking at some of his paintings the students look at and identify shapes in a still life that has been set up for them. I use the document camera to project the display so that all students can see it. Next they begin to draw thinking about the shapes and sizes.  

Students will do several planning sketches and then will either turn them into a final drawing or a cut paper collage.