5th Grade Fireflies and Moonlight

The 5th Graders at Alden Middle School just finished learning about the famous local artist, Charles Burchfield.  Burchfield is known for his romantic and often times fantastic watercolors of nature.  Burchfield developed his own unique style of watercolor painting that included American landscapes, cityscapes, and of course, nature.  Charles Burchfield was born in 1893 in Ohio, later moving to Buffalo, NY.  Burchfield loved the streets of Buffalo and the surrounding countryside.  He started to paint in a realistic style during this time.

For this project, we learned all about Charles Burchfield and his unique style of watercolor painting through teacher created Power Points, class discussions and educational video clips (lots of great ones on YouTube and from the Burchfield Penney Art Center!) of his life and art.  Next, students focused on the elements of value and space to create a part fantasy/part realistic painting of moonlight, forests and fireflies.  The students added an extra element of surprise by making some fireflies 3-D and flying right off their painting!

I wish I could take credit for this great idea, but it was inspired by an amazing art teacher at MaryMaking.com.  She has wonderful ideas- definitely check her out sometime!


Above: First step in learning how to create a range of values by mixing white and blue for the moonlit sky.  Students added wonderful "echo" lines to mimic the use of lines in Charles Burchfield's art.

 
Above: Students learned how to show space and perspective by creating some trees higher up and smaller on the picture plane (to look far away) and paint some trees lower down and much larger on the picture plane (to look closer).  We looked out the windows at all the trees going down the street to check this out in real life!  The students also created highlights and shadows on the trees to further practice value.


Students made little fireflies on black paper with metallic gel pencils and added metallic wire antennae.  These were raised off the surface of the painting for a 3-D/pop out effect.  What fun!