Debbie Bellia
Art News: Pre-K – 8th Grade
Art classes at OLG are once again in full swing. It brings so much joy to see the excitement in our students as I roll my cart into their classroom at the beginning of each class. The students here are full of creativity just waiting to be unleashed.
The pre-k classes have been working on drawing and painting turtles using marker, crayon and watercolor. They began by drawing all the parts of a turtle using marker, then blending green and yellow crayon to color it. In the next class their paper was crinkled to make cracks in the paper to give the illusion of rippled water. The students then painted the background with blue watercolor to make their turtles
“swim” in the water. When they were done they sprinkled salt on to the wet watercolor to make bubbles so the water appeared foamy. They did an amazing job on all the steps and their work is beautiful.
The kindergarten, 2nd and 3rd grades are working on creating a composition using geometric shapes. They learned what a composition is, how to balance their composition and how to use overlap to create depth. Their geometric designs were created with black Sharpie and colored using crayon to show shading and value. The completed crayon design backgrounds will be painted with watercolor in the next class. The student’s work demonstrates very creative shape placement and
strong use of color.
The 1st grade just completed large oil pastel sunflower drawings. This project encourages the students to draw big and bold, using the whole sheet of paper. They blended color and demonstrated great, expressive line work and their final drawings are beautiful. The students painted the backgrounds with blue watercolor in the final step.
The 4th grade is working on fine point pen bird studies. They began by
observing a bird subject and then sketching its outline on paper. Once they got the basic form they used fine point pen to add all the feather details. They learned how to use stippling, model lines and cross-hatching to add shading to their drawing. They are adding branches, leaves, rocks and etc. in the background in the next class. The final drawings will be colored in blended colored pencil.
The the 5th-8th grades have been working on observational drawing from 3D objects using drawing pencils and blending pads. The students were given a variety of tools to observe and then drew them beginning with a simple contour line drawing. Then they added all the intricate details to the drawings like texture marks, writing, shadows, highlights,etc. They created three different drawings in all. When they were done they cut the drawings out and creatively mounted them on a
background using black, gray and colored paper. Their drawings are amazingly accurate and the completed works are very well composed.
The completed pieces of art will proudly hang in the hallways in the coming weeks. The students, once again, are showing their God-given gift to create and I, once again, am so privileged and honored to teach them. We are off to another great year at OLG.
