Last week, 3rd grade started their first art project of the year, and they did a great job! We created our own version of James Rizzi's cities! I was first introduced to the art of James Rizzi through the amazing art teacher, Cassie Stephens. She has her own James Rizzi lesson here. James Rizzi was an artist who lived in New York City, and was inspired by the city and people around him. You can view more of his art by clicking on his name!
Here's how we created our works of art!
Materials:
Day 1: Intro to James Rizzi and his art inspired by skyscrapers. I showed them a few examples, like this one. It's one of my personal favorites.
and then I proceeded to show them how to draw the buildings. I explained these don't have to be perfect, and we don't need a ruler. They also had a refresher on overlapping to create space in their picture. I also demonstrated how you can make each building unique by adding a different facial expression, or by adding different shapes on top. Each building needs windows too! The windows are different shapes and sizes as well.
After that, it's time to get to work! We have 45 minute classes, so most of them were able to draw details and start to trace in that amount of time.
Here's a video showing how to draw the buildings!
Here's a video showing how to color/paint the buildings!
Here's some 3rd grade works in progress!
Day 2: They finish tracing with a Sharpie, and start to color! We talk about "Lawn Mower Coloring", which is coloring slowly in long lines, and we talk about filling in all the white spaces.
Here's some folks doing a great job coloring!
