1st and 2nd Grade Art

We began a new project this week based on the jungle paintings of the French artist Henri Rousseau.

We viewed several examples of his work and discussed what we saw in his paintings. When telling the students about Rousseau, they were amazed to hear he had never been to a jungle and that he had never had a lesson in art. They learned how an artist could be "self taught" and we had a wonderful discussion about things they had taught themselves. We began working on the project by creating a background painting utilizing a horizon line, mixed green paint and mixed colors for the sky. The following class the students began building their jungle with colored paper. This project expands their sculptural skills, problem solving and mixed media use. This is a new project for me as well and I am looking forward to seeing the creative outcome.