Real vs Surreal: 5th Grade Shoes With a Twist
(Note: This is the 3rd of 3 posts... please also check out new work from Kinder and 3rd grade! :)
Happy New Year!! I hope that your holiday season has been relaxing, and filled with family, friends and happy memories! It's a cliche, but didn't 2015 just FLY by???
(Here's a little dose of Holiday dog cuteness... Two pups who are really, really patient with me constantly making them pose for pictures!)
And now onto business!
In 5th grade, we are finishing up an awesome exploration into observational drawing- with a little bit of a twist. Drawing shoes seems to always be a favorite among many students... And there are some really interesting shoes out there! I wanted to have our 5th graders have the experience of observational drawing, but I also wanted them to put a bit more creativity into their work. So we combined reality (the shoe) with not-reality (Surrealism.) These ALL turned out fabulous! It was a unit that every single student was successful with... Love it!
We began with learning how to really look at things that we wanted to draw. Not what we remember or believe a shoe should look like, but what it ACTUALLY looks like. This was challenging at first for some of the students, but no one gave up!
We also looked at examples of contour line drawings. This was an opportunity to sneak in a little of my favorite things... book illustrators. We looked at the work of Shel Silverstien, who, besides being an author and poet, was also an illustrator. (To see what we talked about, click over to the MEDIA page and scroll down to Contour Shoes. :)
They began by drawing their shoe, focusing on the details and recording their shoe as they actually saw it. Stitching, proportions, laces... these were really very beautiful on their own!
After the shoe was complete, we talked about ways to create a world around them. We explored Surrealism and the wacky but interesting artist Salvador Dali. (To see this presentation, click HERE.) Surrealist artists focused on images that were reminsent of dreams: taking reality and making it more fantastical and sometimes unreal. The students were challenged to somehow turn their very real, observational drawings of their shoes into a Surreal portrait- either by adding elements to the background or actually altering the shoe in some way.
Beyond Dali, we also looked at the work of Romanian contempoary artist and graphic designer Ghica Popa. He has worked for brands such as: Nike, DC Shoes, Less Taiwan, Bic, IKEA, Yahoo, Orange, Samsung, Windows, Nikita clothing, L'Officiel Hommes, Coca-Cola and many others. The kids really enjoyed his graphic shoe series in which he turned Nike sneakers into souped up space verhicles.
These really turned out amazing! Each design is unique and every student was successful! Enjoy!
