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 still makes art today. 

Wayne Thiebaud, Cakes (1963)

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:

Andrew, 3rd Grade (Monfette)

Artem, 3rd Grade (Stone)

Brixton, 3rd Grade (Stone)

Desmond, 3rd Grade (Fletcher Nickl)

Evan, 3rd Grade (Monfette)

Gavin, 3rd Grade (Fletcher Nickl)

Pedro, 3rd Grade (Monfette)

Priya, 3rd Grade (Monfette)

Siobhan, 3rd Grade (Fletcher Nickl)

Yulissa, 3rd Grade (Monfette)

Zerihun, 3rd Grade (Fletcher Nickl)

Manos, 3rd Grade (Monfette)

Taking Transportation

A few weeks ago, artists in PK and Kindergarten learned about transportation, which helps us get from one place to another. We watched a video about different forms of transportation and we talked about how we get to school using transportation. Many students take a car or the school bus!

Students then set about painting forms of transportation, using both primary and secondary colors that they have been practicing mixing.

Some students painted a form of transportation that you can see on the road, and others painted forms of transportation that you can see in the sky. We also talked about adding a background to our painting, as well as details like traffic lights, stop signs and clouds.

Mera, Kindergarten

Some of these paintings are featured on a bulletin board in the connector hallway, near the music room!