4th Grade- Abstract Still Life

4th grade studies abstract still life. We start the project by discussing how abstract means you can still tell what the artwork is, but it does not look realistic because the image has been distorted or exaggerated. For example, you can change the size, color, or shape. We also discussed how a still life is a artwork of something that does not move on its own and made a list of possible examples on the board.

Next we looked at artwork by Romero Britto. I just love his use of colors, patterns, and designs. I also thought he would be a good tie in to this project because we studied Zentangles in our last project.

Students drew 3 simple still life thumb nail sketches and then selected their best one for the final project. They drew their final project on a 9 x 12 inch paper starting with pencil and then went over the pencil lines with sharpie. We added lines in the background to break up the drawing more and to allow the students to use more patterns.

During our second day of this lesson, students added colors and patterns using markers. i reminded them to color nice and neat. I also told them not to use black because our outlines were in black. Here are a few of the results.