Pumpkin season

Well, the season of pumpkins is rapidly coming coming to a close! Ahead of Thanksgiving, I am already seeing signs and symbols of fall fade away and switch on to winter mode!

Some of my first grade students are tackling a moonlit pumpkin project that I have seen on a number of blogs and art teacher posts. This is typically a second or third grade project by most accounts, but I wanted to give it a try with my first grade classes to challenge them.

Boy, did they rise to the challenge! This project tackles concepts of value, color mixing, collage and space all in one project. It should be broken down into three classes.

The first week, I have them draw pumpkins and we discussed value (highlight and shadow). We practiced on dry erase boards, and drew some rough contour line drawings of pumpkins. We took those sketches to black paper and drew in white oil pastel and colorized in chalk pastel, with emphasis on highlight and shadow.

The following week, we painted the moonlit background. We drew a horizon line for the field and a circle for the moon. After, we introduced white for the moon and gradually added more blue paint to paint various tints of blue, and painted a halo over the moon. As we got a bit darker, we started adding black to the paint to fill in the remaining night sky.
Following the sky, we mixed orange with navy blue to make a nice brown color for the field. Background complete!

The last week was all about composition and collage.
We talked about how in a landscape, objects appear larger in the foreground and smaller in the background. They placed their biggest pumpkins in the front, as well as showing overlapping. When everything was cut and arranged, we glued down the pumpkins and finished with drawing leaves and vines.

So very proud of these fall beauties! Have a look!