5th Grade Metal Masks

5^th Grade Metal Masks

In art class 5^th grade studied the art created by the ancient Incan, Aztec and Mayans from Central America and South America.  We learned that gold, silver and other metals were commonly used to create pieces of art.  We looked at many examples of ancient metal art and then focused on masks.  We started by discussing how different cultures around the world have different purposes for masks and found that masks look different in different cultures. We found that many Aztec, Mayan and Incan masks were made out of metal and were not worn but created as gifts to gods and goddess and left in temples as offerings.  Students began by drawing their own ancient mask and then transferred their design to their choice of silver, bronze or gold colored metal.  They worked from both sides of the metal to push designs and decorations out or in using a technique called tooling.  By repeating designs close to one another they found they could make textures.  When they were finished adding designs students carefully cut out their mask and added black paint to make it look like it was ancient.

Great Job 5^th Grade!

Edible Color Wheel

Edible Color Wheel

5th Graders reviewed the color wheel and color mixing by creating all the colors from the color wheel with food coloring, white frosting, and cookies.  They started with the Primary Colors: Blue, Yellow and Red and then had to create the Secondary Colors: Orange, Violet and Green and the Intermediate Colors: Red-Orange, Red-Violet, Blue-Violet, Blue-Green, Yellow-Green and Yellow-Orange. They frosted cookies as they created the new colors and placed the cookies on the color wheel in the correct spot. When they were done they were able to eat their art.

5th Grade Non-Objective Paintings

Non-Objective Art

In art class 5^th graders learned the difference between realistic art, abstract art and non-objective art.  They learned that realistic art is when an artist tries to make the object or subject in their art exactly how it would look in real life, abstract art is when artists take a real life object or subject and change it to make it look different then in real life and non-objective art is when there is no object just lines, shapes and colors. In this art project students focused on creating Non-Objective art using many different techniques. They started with creating a painting of shapes, colors and lines using liquid watercolors and spray paints. Next art class they used bright oil pastels to add more color and different printmaking techniques using black paint to create interesting patterns and designs in their art.  They used things like marker caps, ribbons, bubble wrap and paper stencils to create the black designs.  Next students learned about the artist Jackson Pollock and used his painting technique of action splatter painting to create another layer of painting on their art. Then for the last layer of their painting they used glue and glitter to create more designs and shapes on their art.

5th Grade Aboriginal Dot Paintings

Students in 5th grade learned about the art of aboriginal dot paintings from the Australian Culture. Aboriginal dot paintings are created to tell stories. Many of the symbols used by Aboriginal artists are a variation of lines or dots. Similar symbols can have multiple meanings according to the art region and the combination of symbols can tell complex Dreamtime stories.

Students in 5th grade studied the symbols and created their own story in the style of dot painting. 5th graders first created our hands using white paint then planned our story around our hand. The 5th graders chose a color scheme to paint their story and carefully painted their symbols using the dot technique.