Arcimboldo “Fruit Face”

Giuseppe Arcimboldo was an Italian artist from the 1500s who spent years working as an official court painter. He developed a style of composing portraits from fruits, vegetables, etc., which was uniquely his own. There's a great book about him called "Fruit Face" which is what I used to introduce this lesson.
1. Find lots of large, colorful images of all kinds of fruits and vegetables from either magazines or stock photos online. I found that www.iStockPhoto.com has lots to choose from and are not too expensive.
2. Make color prints or color copies of all the images and distribute to the students, along with a scissors, glue stick and black construction paper. Show them how they can "build" a face by layering smaller, feature-like pieces on top of larger shapes. Careful cutting (removing all the background) will help make their face look nice and neat.
3. Lastly, the students will glue down all the shapes, starting with the background. Encourage lots of detail with clothes, accessories, etc.

Art Journaling 118

I think my biggest goal for my upcoming art journal class is to have kids embrace the loose, accidental art that can happen when you let yourself just create. Fourth and 5th graders especially tend to get more judgmental about their abilities, so I hope this un-fussy journal page will let them have some fun.
1. I started by tearing small leaves from tissue paper, and planned out three flowers on each page. Using 50/50 glue and water, I wet the journal pages and arranged the tissue flowers on top. Let dry completely.
2. Drawing with one continuous line, I started at the bottom with a Sharpie marker, traced up and around each petal 2 times, added little loops in the center of the flower, and then drew back down to the beginning point. Small leaves may be added.
3. Using either watercolor or watercolor pencils, paint the background, intentionally leaving white space around each flower and leaf. In fact, the paint should not touch the marker at any point. The extra white adds some extra punch to this colorful layout.

CA Visual Art Standards: Grade Five
2.4 Create an expressive abstract composition based on real objects.