2nd Graders Scenic Paintings

     My second grade art students created some paintings made from pictures taken from around our local area.  I had taken some pictures and found some on the internet for them to use as inspiration.  We used watery tempera paint to make some of the water effects.  We talked about perspective and using overlapping shapes to create distance in our paintings.  We talked about color changes to create the illusion of space and distance also.  I was blown away by some of their work.  These are the ones that really stand out although they all did a really good job.  This is one of my best classes.

I'm not sure I could make an ocean wave this well.

The fact that she made the railing appear to be moving away from the viewer impressed me.  Plus the water and atmospheric color changes are really good.

This artist had planned to add a lot more stuff in her painting but I stopped her right here.  I said she could make another one and add boats and planes.

This artist used almost every art technique I'd taught, overlapping, foreground, midground and background objects,  objects getting smaller the further back in the painting they are...she even left a white border around the edge of the painting.  I'm keeping an eye on this artist.

This artist managed to create fairly realistic tree reflections in the water.  He did this drawing a row of trees and folding the paper and making a rubbing to transfer the image on the bottom, then painting.

She wanted to do a lighthouse and I said it sounded like a good idea.  When I got back around to her she hadn't done what I'd expected and that was a good thing.  I expected to see a picture dominated by a light house with a little sky maybe showing.  She made the painting more about the sky and the ocean and then the lighthouse.  I love it when they surprise me like that.

     I loved the variations in color they all got in their paintings.  When your doing paintings of mostly sky and water it can be tricky.  These are definitely going up in the hallway display for a little while.