Vancouver Cityscapes

My Grade One class created these beautiful cityscape collages of Vancouver, BC.  We were inspired by a local artist named Nicholas Brancati.  He is an illustrator who creates mixed-media collage illustrations and art using bits and pieces of fabric, paper, packaging, magazine, newspaper, cardboard and various other materials.  You cans find more of his amazing work on his Etsy Shop page.

I used one of the prints I purchased from him at the Vancouver Make It Market last year for our inspiration.  My students all immediately recognized our famous Vancouver landmark, Science World, and were eager to create their own versions. Unfortunately I no longer see this particular print on his website.  But here are a few close-ups of what we were able to create.:

Our evening art contains buildings created in cool colored construction paper.  However, this would be just as effective in bright primary and secondary colors as well. 

Spring!

 Here is a lesson inspired by The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle.

After reading the book we decided to use the same painted papers we had left over from our Winter Birds buddy activity.  Once again we got together with our Big Buddies for a little extra help.

Using petal tracers that they had made for us, we cut out approximately 10 petals and arranged them in a circle around a yellow tissue paper circle.  Green tissue was used to create a stem and leaves.  We then used whatever scraps of painted paper and tissue we had to create an insect.

Mouse Paint Colour Wheels

I found this adorable colour wheel idea on Artsonia.com.  After reading the book Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh we created our own versions.  We folded a sheet of paper into 6 squares - they do not have to be perfect squares!  We then painted each primary colour onto a square and then use our primary colours to mix our secondary colours and painted those on the remaining 3 squares.

The next day we used tracers on the back side of the painted papers to draw out our 6 mouse shapes.  We then glued them in a circle to replicate a colour wheel - all primary colours lie opposite their complimentary secondary colour.

We cut ears out of pink construction paper and used sharpies to add tails and eyes.

This student didn't follow the directions completely but I love how all the other mice look like they are fleeing the green one!  Pretty darn cute!