Rockland Jewish Academy - Second & Third Grade Artwork

Second & Third Grade Artwork Project: (Projects 2, 3 & 4 below)
Project 1: Planet Symbol Paintings Return to main artwork page

Our 2nd and 3rd grade artists were introduced to the Swiss artist Paul Klee, an artist who originally made colorless pen-and-ink art. Later in life, Klee fell in love with color and his most famous artwork is now known for his use of shape, line and especially color. Our art class looked at Klee’s artwork and identified different lines found in his paintings, like zigzag, spiral and wavy lines, to name a few.

We then discussed how some of his lines were used to represent things in a simplified way, which we call symbols. Who says we can’t bring some science into the art room? Our artists looked at symbols that scientists use to represent the planets in our solar system. The 2nd and 3rd graders used these planet symbols as well as their own lines, to come up with their own Paul Klee inspired paintings.

Sam

Jacob

Eliana

Jarrett

Brooke

Hanna

Yirshalem

Ben

Rebecca

Julian

Adam

Gal

Project 2: Tree of Life

Our inspiration for this project was Gustav Klimt’s painting, The Tree
of Life. Our 2nd and 3rd grade artists learned about Klimt, an
Austrian artist who painted in a very imaginative and decorative way.
We noticed that Klimt used a lot of symbolism in his artwork, meaning
that many of the images he painted had hidden meanings. We used some
of the characteristics Klimt used, to each create our own “tree of
life.” We painted our trees in gold, just like Klimt did, and made
the same spiraling branches to make our trees look lifelike as well.

We talked about patterns, and incorporated them into our trees. Some
students chose to make dotted patterns, while others chose to make
patterns with lines. Some students even decided to incorporate a
combination of patterns to add variety to their artwork. Although
each of our trees is a different interpretation of The Tree of Life,
the great thing is that each artist’s tree is unique and different in
its own way.

Gal

Jarrett

Eliana

Rebecca

Sam

Julian

Yirshalem

Jacob

Brooke

Adam

Ben

Hanna

Project 3: Tint and Pattern Circles

Our 2nd and 3rd grade artists looked at Kandinsky’s artwork,
particularly his paintings consisting of only circles. In this
project, we also used only circles, using overlapping and cropping
techniques. We learned that overlapping shows one object “in front”
of the other, and cropping gives us the impression that an object is
going “off the paper.”

After our circle designs were completed, we learned how to add tint, or white, to colors. We painted our entire background, or negative space, with one tinted color, then added other color tints to our foreground, or positive space (the circle designs). After painting, we used oil pastels to add subtle patterns and embellishments to our artwork.

Sam

Eliana

Jacob

Gal

Julian

Brooke

Rebecca

Yirshalem

Ben

Adam

Jarrett

Hanna

Project 4: Three Musicians

Our 2nd and 3rd grade artists were introduced to this project by watching a short video, which was a read aloud of the book When Pigasso Met Mootise by Nina Laden. “Pigasso” is a made up character, but is based off of the famous Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (and “Mootise” is portraying another famous artist, Henri Matisse). When looking at the illustrations (as well as some of Picasso’s real artwork), we noticed how Picasso’s art during Cubism was “all mixed up” and it looked as if his art was broken into pieces, like shattered glass. We spent the most time looking at his

famous piece Three Musicians. noticed how the three musicians in this painting had similar qualities to those we saw in his other work. Using a collage technique, each of our artists cut and pasted pieces of patterned paper by overlapping, to create three musicians of their own. We talked about colors that contrast with each other, and how it is much easier to see a lighter color on a darker background, and a darker color on a lighter background. See if you can identify the three types of musicians each artist chose to incorporate into their collage!