Dale Chihuly unit! 2-D lessons

We 'heart' Dale Chihuly!

  What a fantastic artist to learn about.  One of the many, many reasons I love my job is because I get to teach children about an amazing variety of art that exists in our world.  And as a Wisconsinite there are opportunities right here in our state to view Dale's work!

For those of you who have never seen his work or want to know more about him, please visit his website: www.chihuly.com

This unit was taught to my K-4th grade and covered 5-6 weeks of 2-D and 3-D art.  Many of my lessons I borrowed from other blogs -"Thank YOU Blog-land"  as well as Pinterest.  I'll try to link back to as many as I can, but as most of you know it is very difficult to link to the original source.  Many of the lesson ideas I used orginiated from a Nashville Elementary art blog: http://chihulyelementaryartlessons.weebly.com/unit-plan.html

It's very well thought out and provided a nice framework for my unit.  As with most borrowed units each teacher tends to go 'off' on his or her own to create what works for them.

Chihuly Drawings:  These drawings were done by 1st grade.  I have large rolls of white paper that was donated last year to the art room.  I rolled these out all over my classroom and just let the kids rip!  We practiced Dale's drawing style by using 'whole arm' movements and working with many colors at one time.  This activity began as one of those, "What can we do with 15 extra minutes" moments and turned out to be a fun activity.  Students could draw as many Chihuly forms as they liked and cut them out to take home that day.

K-1st Chihuly Paintings:  The next week students were instructed how to draw Chihuly forms using those 'whole-arm' movements again as well as using multiple colors at once again.  This time we used crayons or cray-pas and tempera cakes.  I taught students to 'safely splatter paint' using their brush and gently tapping it on their finger.  That whole week students were going home from art with tiny paint dots on their faces and arms- whatever area the art smock didn't cover!  ;)

2nd and 3rd Grade Paintings:  These grade levels were able to model their paintings right from the examples of Chihuly's work.  We first used wide sponge brushes to coat tempera paint on the paper- dragging it to create colorful streaks.  Then students used chalk pastel to draw forms.  Then to finish students were able to splatter paint and use squirt bottles (recycled glue bottles filled with paint) to outline and add details.  It was a challenge not to over-do it with the squirt bottles- they were just SO FUN!

The results are amazing and are a very close likeness to Chihuly's drawing.

Stay tuned for 3-D art from our fabulous unit!