created by Elizabeth32008 in Grade 2 at
St. Charles School
from school project "Dragon Eyes"
art id #121093089
About this School Project (Dragon Eyes)
To start off the new year, first through fifth grade has embarked on a series all about dragons in honor of the chinese tradition.
Each class learned about the ancient chinese tradition of the zodiac, this is a 12 year repeating cycle, where each turn of the wheel has a different animal associated with it. This turn of the wheel is the year of the dragon, so to explore more about this we created works of art inspired by this idea.
Second grade took a look at dragons eyes, we examined what was so exciting about these images. What stood out was brilliant color, intense compositions, and the use of pure black. Students worked by first sketching out their eyes, creating their composition and filling the work with details. We then used oil pastels to fill in the works with intense color. Finally we added deep black to finish off the details and make the colors pop! Something we really focused on in this piece was craftsmanship, working with a medium like oil pastels is difficult because it smudges, so we learned an old artist technique to help with this. We use two pieces of paper, one to create our drawing, and one to rest our hand on, so the paper underneath stays nice and clean.
