Delicious Desserts, Inspired by Wayne Thiebaud

After exploring color mixing by creating new colors and naming them, 3rd grade artists looked at and discussed the work of American painter Wayne Thiebaud. Thiebaud (pronounced "tee-bow") is known for his paintings of everyday objects, like food, and is still alive and making art today! 

Wayne Thiebaud, Four Ice Cream Cones (1964)

We looked at his paintings of different kinds of desserts and noticed his use of bright colors and dramatic, colorful shadows. Looking at several examples made us hungry! 

To begin our own paintings of desserts, we looked at the geometric shapes and forms that make up a lot of our favorite desserts. We noticed that many desserts are either a cylinder, like a cake or pie; a cone shape, like an ice cream cone; a sphere, like the scoop of ice cream; or a triangular prism, like a slice of cake. We brainstormed and drew a few sketches of our favorite desserts before selecting one to sketch out on larger paper, focusing on the shapes. 

The following class, we used our recent experience with mixing colors to paint our favorite desserts! We thought about how we could mix a variety of colors, thinking about the bright colors that Thiebaud uses in his painting, as well as using white to create lighter tints of a color. 

Students painted their desserts, incorporating tints, and the following week, they added additional details on top, now that the first layer of paint had dried. Students thought about how they could decorate their cakes, ice cream cones, sundaes and doughnuts with creative details like frosting, sprinkles, flowers, candles and hot fudge. 

During the next class, students painted the background, considering the use of a complementary colors and colors that would help their desserts to stand out. Since Thiebaud is also known for his use of strong shadows, we looked at cast shadows and how the shape of the object changes the shape of the shadow. Students added a colorful shadow to their dessert, and many students actually chose to add a window in their background to show a light source. 

For our last class, students participated in a gallery walk to see everyone's artwork and also a turn and talk to share their work with a partner. Here are some colorful examples of our delectable Wayne Thiebaud inspired desserts:

Ditty, 3rd Grade (Fletcher)

Gianna, 3rd Grade (Monfette)

James, 3rd Grade (Donato)

Laisa, 3rd Grade (DeBaie Nickl)

Mane, 3rd Grade (Fletcher)

Mary, 3rd Grade (DeBaie Nickl)

Norah, 3rd Grade (Monfette)

Ruken, 3rd Grade (DeBaie Nickl)

Sean, 3rd Grade (Donato)

Bianca, 3rd Grade (Debaie Nickl)

Duncan, 3rd Grade (Fletcher)

Griffin, 3rd Grade (Fletcher)

Leila, 3rd Grade (Donato)

Mason, 3rd Grade (DeBaie Nickl)

Noa, 3rd Grade (Donato)

Thank You for Coming to the Art Show Reception!

Thank you to all the students, families and staff that came to the Art Show reception last night! We had a great turn out and it was so great to see everyone there enjoying the artwork and supporting our artists! Artwork will be on display at the Watertown Mall, until Thursday, April 11, so go check it out if you haven’t yet.

2019 Watertown Public Schools Art Show

Mark your calendars! Our annual Watertown Public Schools PK-12 Art Show is happening from March 27th - April 11th at the Watertown Mall (near Target). Letters for students whose artwork will be on display will go out the 3rd week of March. 

We will be celebrating the hard work of all of our artists at a public reception for the exhibition on Monday, April 1 from 5-7 pm. There will be refreshments and a photo booth! Please join us! 

Many thanks to the Watertown Mall for hosting our annual art show.

Creative Color Mixing and Naming

Artists in 3rd grade recently explored color mixing in preparation for an upcoming project! We mixed 10 different colors and also came up with a unique name for each color. 

First, students explored color mixing, trying to come up with 10 different colors for their palette. We discussed how you might try to create a color that you already have in mind, like a light green, or just see what happens if you mix a lot of white, a little blue, and some yellow. Since we had just painted a color wheel with primary, secondary and tertiary colors, students were familiar with which colors to mix together to get a wide range of colors. We also experimented with adding white and black to colors, noting how it made colors lighter or darker. 

The following class, students thought of creative names for each of the colors they had made. Instead of simply naming colors "light pink" or "dark blue," students were challenged to come up with creative names like "cherry blossom pink" and "storm blue." We looked at examples of paint chips and noticed that many names were inspired by animals, nature, food, and the weather. We made a list of things we might be inspired by for color naming and then named all of our colors. 

We shared our paint colors and corresponding names with partners and then with the whole class. A lot of students used alliteration, which is when you repeat the same letter at the beginning of your words, like "pig pink" and "grass green." Check out some of our creative color names below!

Welcome back!

Welcome back Hosmer artists and families! To start off the school year, students in 1st - 5th grades collaborated on an artwork that is now on display in our school lobby. Inspired by the wing murals of artist Kelsey Montague that have been popping up all over the country, students created and designed a feather using a monochromatic color scheme -- one color family. 

We started with pencil, choosing either an abstract design made up of lines and shapes, or a theme like nature, personal interests, etc. Then students outlined their design with Sharpie marker and used markers, colored pencils and crayons in their color family. We thought about using different materials and shades within that color family to emphasize different parts of our design. 

The last step was to cut out the feather. The feather were organized and sorted by color and then arranged and glued from the bottom up, so that the feathers overlapped each other. It took a while to put it all together!

All the feathers are part of our rainbow pair of wings display downstairs in the lobby of Hosmer. Collaboratively they form the wings that will help us fly and soar this year!