KINDERGARTEN . . . Dr. Seuss!

 Drawing by Michaela

Drawing by Ally

To celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday on March 2, Kindergarteners drew a picture of a very familiar friend of theirs . . . a cat in a tall, striped hat! "The Cat in the Hat" is one of 44 books illustrated and written by Theodor Seuss Geisel (1904-1991), better known to all of us as the beloved Dr. Seuss.

Kindergarteners celebrated the day by walking to art today with the tall striped hats they made in their homeroom classes. Some wore red in honor of the Cat in the Hat and we were all given extra reading time today too!

Look at this wonderful sculpture made out of Legos of the famous cat!






Here are some more of our drawings. To see all of our work, click on this link for artsonia. com and scroll down to the Kindergarten exhibit.  http://www.artsonia.com/schools/school.asp?id=114839

Drawing by Ava

Drawing by Claire

Drawing by Noah

Drawing by Timmy

SECOND GRADE . . . A Ranney Landscape

Landscape by Dylan

Second graders created landscapes of Ranney School. Can you recognize some of the buildings in Dylan's illustration? Using creative choices for his colors, he drew the Barn Building (the ECEC), the Lower School building, the Clock Tower and the Little White House! A large sign welcomes everyone to his scene.

Inspired by the artwork of Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), we saw how the amazing details of Rockwell's scenes helps to capture our interest and tells us a story about life in 20th century America. The image below is a street scene of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the town where he lived. Norman Rockwell not only included the buildings on Main Street in Stockbridge, but he filled his painting with people and cars passing by to give us a feeling of life in the town. We can also tell it takes place during December by the Christmas decorations on the buildings, the bare trees outside, and the snow on the ground.

To create our landscapes, we looked carefully at the architectural details of the buildings on our campus. For the most part, the buildings all start off as a rectangle and many of them have a triangular roof just over the front door. Adding special details, such as the windows, the columns, a flag, a winter tree, a sign, and kids playing outside, help to tell our story of Ranney School. Here are some more wonderful examples of our landscapes! To see all of our work, follow this link to our exhibit page on artsonia.com.   http://www.artsonia.com/schools/school.asp?id=114839

Landscape by Alexander

Landscape by Mara

Landscape by Tori

Landscape by Sammy

Note to families...
This art blog will be updated regularly with new posts sharing our daily activities in the art room and news about upcoming art exhibits. To respect the privacy of our students, names will always be limited to first name only and identifiable photos will never be accompanied with a name. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to write in the comment box below or send me an email at blevine@ranneyschool.org. I would love to hear from you!
    In my class, students are given the chance to explore different materials and fun new techniques as they develop their signature style. Some young artists love to draw with a pencil, some like to paint on canvas or create images in a digital format, while others prefer working with clay and molding three-dimensional forms. In my classroom, we use a variety of materials allowing all artists to experiment and figure out which type of art they like the best. At Ranney School, we place a strong emphasis on originality and celebrate artistic differences, always nurturing and encouraging the imagination of every student.
     Remember to check out our display of finished artwork and student portfolios in the Ranney home page of Artsonia.com.  http://www.artsonia.com/schools/school.asp?id=114839

THIRD GRADE . . . Creating a tropical forest!

Forest by Ava G.

Third graders learned about the primitive artwork of painter, Henri Rousseau (1844-1910). Although Rousseau never left Paris during his lifetime, and never actually saw a real jungle, he was best known for his paintings of jungles and tropical forests. Inspired by the plants in the botanical gardens and animals in the Paris zoo, he created many imaginary painted jungles. "Tropical Forest with Monkeys" is perhaps one of his most famous paintings. Even though he was a self taught artist, he gained the praise of artists such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse and his paintings can be seen in museums all over the world. This painting now hangs in Washington DC at the National Gallery of Art.

Third grade artists learned how to draw monkeys and created a composition on the page with tall trees and many different shapes and colors of leaves to give us the illusion of a forest. Just like Rousseau we also used our imagination and our forests are very different from each other! Here are some examples of our work. To see all of our tropical forests, click on this link for Artsonia.com.

http://www.artsonia.com/schools/school.asp?id=114839

Forest by Caitlyn

Forest by Gwendolen

Forest by Layla

Forest by James

Forest by Marcus

Note to families...
This art blog will be updated regularly with new posts sharing our daily activities in the art room and news about upcoming art exhibits. To respect the privacy of our students, names will always be limited to first name only and identifiable photos will never be accompanied with a name. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to write in the comment box below or send me an email at blevine@ranneyschool.org. I would love to hear from you!
    In my class, students are given the chance to explore different materials and fun new techniques as they develop their signature style. Some young artists love to draw with a pencil, some like to paint on canvas or create images in a digital format, while others prefer working with clay and molding three-dimensional forms. In my classroom, we use a variety of materials allowing all artists to experiment and figure out which type of art they like the best. At Ranney School, we place a strong emphasis on originality and celebrate artistic differences, always nurturing and encouraging the imagination of every student.
     Remember to check out our display of finished artwork and student portfolios in the Ranney home page of Artsonia.com.  http://www.artsonia.com/schools/school.asp?id=114839

FIFTH GRADE . . . Optical Illusions

Optical illusion by David

Maurits Cornelis Escher, best known to us as M.C. Escher, was a Dutch graphic artist. His woodcut, called "Sky and Water," from 1938, is typical of Escher's work. It plays around with the positive and negative spaces in the print, tricking us to focus on just the bird in the sky or the fish in the water. In mathematical terms, his artwork is often called a tessellation, a repetition of tiles that fit together like a puzzle.

Fifth graders worked on original illusions with one image that tessellates together with another image in the negative space. This project was difficult for us to do and definitely called on our creative thinking skills. It is hard enough to solve a problem, even harder to come up with our own puzzle for everyone else to solve! The main idea behind our puzzles is to be able to see an image two different ways. Many of our students played around with the negative spaces in letters of the alphabet, and others used a more random shape.

Here are a few examples of their illusions. To see all of our work, check out our exhibit page on Artsonia.com.  http://www.artsonia.com/schools/school.asp?id=114839

Illusion by Anya

Illusion by Pierce

Illusion by Aadhi

Illusion by Nate

Illusion by Luke

Illusion by Maya

KINDERGARTEN . . . Rainbow Fish

Rainbow Fish by Gianna

Kindergarten students just completed an underwater scene with watercolor and tempera paints, based on the illustrations in the book, "The Rainbow Fish," by Marcus Pfister. In this story, we read about a beautiful fish who learned the way to true happiness only after sharing his special scales with the other fish in the sea. What activities do you do at home that is more fun when you share them with your friends? Doesn't it feel good when you make someone you care about feel special too?

Here is a video of the story we read together in class to share with your family...

To create our paintings, we first learned how to draw a fish using basic shapes, such as an oval and a triangle. We also learned how to add scales inside the fish and how to complete a full underwater scene with an ocean bottom, plants, starfish, crabs and bubbles in the water.

Next, we created the ocean with a large brush, lots of water and blue watercolor paint. With a small, detail brush, we added shimmering colors of tempera paint for each detail in the scene. Finally, when all the paintings were complete, we shared a sparkling sticker with every fish and friend in class!

Here are some examples of our underwater scenes. To see all of our work, click on this link for artsonia. com and scroll down to the Kindergarten exhibit.  http://www.artsonia.com/schools/school.asp?id=114839

Rainbow Fish by Anthony

Rainbow Fish by As'ad

Rainbow Fish by Scout

Rainbow Fish by Sadie

Note to families...
This art blog will be updated regularly with new posts sharing our daily activities in the art room and news about upcoming art exhibits. To respect the privacy of our students, names will always be limited to first name only and identifiable photos will never be accompanied with a name. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to write in the comment box below or send me an email at blevine@ranneyschool.org. I would love to hear from you!
    In my class, students are given the chance to explore different materials and fun new techniques as they develop their signature style. Some young artists love to draw with a pencil, some like to paint on canvas or create images in a digital format, while others prefer working with clay and molding three-dimensional forms. In my classroom, we use a variety of materials allowing all artists to experiment and figure out which type of art they like the best. At Ranney School, we place a strong emphasis on originality and celebrate artistic differences, always nurturing and encouraging the imagination of every student.
     Remember to check out our display of finished artwork and student portfolios in the Ranney home page of Artsonia.com.  http://www.artsonia.com/schools/school.asp?id=114839

PRE-K . . . A snowy name!

Our Pre-Kindergarten snowmen are standing in the snow next to a bare winter tree and looking up at the sky. The snowflakes in the sky spell out our names!

We are learning so many skills in art class. Every art project offers opportunities to explore new materials and learn new techniques. With our snowmen project we learned how to . . .

• draw and cut out the three circles for our snowmen
• cut out a triangle for the orange nose 
• cut strips with a fringe for the scarf
• draw a winter tree with real looking branches . .  these are amazing!!!
• paint our names with finger print snowflakes
• paint the snow along the bottom of the page with a small brush
• work together to follow step by step directions 

To see all of our Pre-K projects, follow this link to our home page of artsonia...   http://www.artsonia.com/schools/school.asp?id=114839

Note to families...
This art blog will be updated regularly with new posts sharing our daily activities in the art room and news about upcoming art exhibits. To respect the privacy of our students, names will always be limited to first name only and identifiable photos will never be accompanied with a name. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to write in the comment box below or send me an email at blevine@ranneyschool.org. I would love to hear from you!
    In my class, students are given the chance to explore different materials and fun new techniques as they develop their signature style. Some young artists love to draw with a pencil, some like to paint on canvas or create images in a digital format, while others prefer working with clay and molding three-dimensional forms. In my classroom, we use a variety of materials allowing all artists to experiment and figure out which type of art they like the best. At Ranney School, we place a strong emphasis on originality and celebrate artistic differences, always nurturing and encouraging the imagination of every student.
     Remember to check out our display of finished artwork and student portfolios in the Ranney home page of Artsonia.com.  http://www.artsonia.com/schools/school.asp?id=114839

FIFTH GRADE . . . Van Gogh inspiration

"Vincent van Gogh is an incredible artist who is identified by his beautiful and swift strokes. My favorite painting of his is "Starry Night!" - Bella

This week our sketchpad assignment was to draw like Vincent van Gogh. Some students created a drawing based on one of his well known paintings and others focused on an original subject matter, but drew it with the short directional strokes most typical of a Vincent van Gogh.

Below each image is the artist statement as told to the class by the fifth grade artists. You are welcome to add comments to our artists at the bottom of this post. They would love to hear from you! Enjoy!!

"I drew 'Starry Night' because I like the swirls of the wind and the cypress tree." - Priya

"I drew the Ranney clock tower. I used swirls and short strokes like Vincent van Gogh." - Colette

"I loved doing this drawing. I love the swirls, the trees, the moon and the wind. The wind is amazing." - Nick

"Instead of doing 'Starry Night,' I did 'City Night' with city buildings in the place of Vincent van Gogh's village. The gray in the sky represents the pollution of the city." - Ankush

"I drew an ocean with shells and fish swimming" -  Michael

" I drew the water and a sunset in the background. Like van Gogh, I created the ocean as lines." - Luke

"I found a picture of a poppy field and drew it like van Gogh." - Andrew 

"I noticed how van Gogh made his swirls and filled my flower with swirls." - Emma

FIRST GRADE . . . A snowy scene

Landscape by Tyler

Our first grade landscapes feature watercolor birch trees, and just like the rest of New Jersey, they are covered in snow!

Birch trees have a very characteristic bark, very similar in appearance to the trees in Tyler's painting above. A birch is a medium sized tree that can reach up to 50 feet in height and can live to be 200 years old. The deep ridges in our trees are typical of an older birch tree. The seeds and the bark provide food for forest animals, such as rabbits, deer and birds. Wood from the birch tree can be used to make canoes, basketball courts, toys, furniture and paper!

Armaan's landscape with the tape removed

To create our landscapes, we used an old painter's trick. After drawing a ground line across the page, first graders placed strips of masking tape on their paper. These strips represented the trees and the tape protected the white bark of the trees from getting covered with watercolor paints. Then we painted a sky using brilliant blues, reds, greens and yellows.

When the paint set, the strips of tape were peeled off the paper. Using a Sharpie marker, students drew the deep ridges of the birch tree bark. With test paper and more watercolors, we "watered" down some black paint to create just the right shade for the shadow along the bark of each tree. With another color, we cast a shadow over the snowy ground.


Here are some more examples of our beautiful winter landscapes. To see all of our work, follow this link to our home page of Artsonia!    http://www.artsonia.com/schools/school.asp?id=114839

Landscape by Adella

Landscape by Brooks

Landscape by Lexi M.

Landscape by Kyra