Gyotaku Fish Printing

The first graders had a wonderful time over the last two weeks creating these beautiful fish prints. This lesson went along with a story in the first grade reading book and this lesson also reinforced social studies and science concepts.

We broke this project into two sessions. The first week we learned about Japan and we shared stories about how this art was developed and why it was useful and fun. We studied the wood block print of The Great Wave by Hokusai and talked about how the printing process was developed for both books and art. During the last part of the lesson we learned how to draw a fish by sketching one in our sketchbook.

The next week when came to art, we broke into small groups and each child took turns creating two prints after the fish was painted with acrylic paint. Two wild fish that were donated by Mrs. Peterson's son and we also bought Tilapia from the local grocery store. I kept one fish paint free for the children to touch and explore.

While the students were waiting their turn to paint, I had an assortment of books about fish and Japan for them to look at. About mid-week, I could see that they needed more to hold their attention, so I created a center with oil based clay. Each child was given a small cube to play with and I showed them how to make a little fish with the clay. This was really fun for the children and kept them occupied, mostly quiet, and very happy while they were waiting to paint.

In past years we have used tempera paint, but the acrylic paint is vibrant and pretty and creates excellent prints with vibrant colors. I think many of these prints are good enough to frame! Each child took one print home that day and the other print will be kept in their file to display for the spring art show.

End of year projects... Part One

We had a lot of fun with unique art projects at the end of the school year but I ran out of time and didn't get many of them posted. I thought I would take a minute and pick a few of the best ones to share before things get too busy this year.
Kindergarten students studied the art of Paul Klee and made their own "Castle in the Sun" by gluing geometric shapes on brown paper. The children loved this project and every castle was different!
The first grade students had a great time learning the Japanese are of Gyotaku. Mrs. Peterson brought it a lovely large carp and each child was able to make a beautiful print from it using acrylic paints.
Some of the third grade classes had the chance to paint these stunning warm and cool Lizards. First we practiced drawing a lizard in our sketchbooks, then we drew a lizard on our watercolor paper with a white crayon. We added patter and design. Finally we painted our lizard with either warm or cool colors, then we painted the background with the opposite family of colors. You could do this same project by drawing almost any animal.

This is one of our all-time favorite projects. The inspiration for this artwork comes from Mimi Thomas and her collection of "My Painted Ponies". I showed the children how to draw the basic shape of a pony and then we divided our pony into sections and decorated each section with symbolic art that represented all the things we had learned during the year. Finally we painted our pony with watercolors, cut it out and mounted it on a piece of art board to create a beautiful piece of art suitable for framing.