1st Grade
Core Knowledge Visual
Art
Component
Art from Long Ago, Elements of Art,
Kinds of Pictures: Portrait, Still Life, Mural
Visual Art as a
Core Knowledge Subject
 Art from
Long Ago
 Elements of
Art




Color
Line
Shape
Texture
 Kinds of
Pictures
 Portrait
“…your child will come to understand that, while art is
doing, it is also seeing and thinking.
By looking closely at art, and talking about it, your child
will begin to develop a love of art and a habit of
enjoying it in thoughtful, active ways.”
-E.D. Hirsh Jr. from What a First Grader Needs to Know
Media Cast
New videos that will help 1st Grade this year include but
are not limited to:
Who is the Artist?
Cezanne
Van Gogh
Seurat
Who is the Artist?
Degas
Renoir
Cassatt
Who is the Artist?
Benton
Hopper
Wood
Art in the Classroom
Gyotaku
The Walch Art Series
The Art of the Near East
and Ancient Egypt
Masks from Many Cultures
Linnea in Monet’s Garden
School Wide Art Show 2008-2009
 The winners of the individual school art shows will be framed and
displayed downtown at the Center for the Arts May 2.
Think Outside the Box
Stay in the Circle





Sit Up
Lean Forward
Activate Your Mind
Nod Your Head
Track your Teacher.
Safety First
“Always come to school
in clothes you are ready to learn in.”
- Mrs. Cliburn 2nd Grade Teacher
The law of the echo.
“For the first grader, art should mostly take the form of
doing: drawing, painting, cutting and pasting,
working with clay and other materials.
Beyond looking at art and talking about [art] do try to
provide your child with materials and opportunities
to be a practicing artist!”
- E.D. Hirsh Jr. from What a First Grader Needs to Know
Portfolio
 Fold in half
 Write your name, grade level
& school
 in big block letters with the big
markers
 Fill the Space – Be Creative
My Portfolio
My
st
1
Grade
Student Portfolio
Quarter 1
Looking Good: Portraits
 Have you had your picture
taken at school?
 Is there a picture of you on
a wall or shelf at home?
 Then that’s your portrait.
 That’s what we call a
picture of a person.
Leonardo da
Vinci
 Portraits can be
 Taken with a camera
 They can be drawn
 They can be painted.
 Perhaps the most famous
portrait in the world is the
Mona Lisa.
 It was painted by the Italian
artist Leonardo da Vinci
[dah VIN-chee] about five
hundred years ago.
“Mona Lisa”
Mona Lisa
 Look at the expression on Mona
Lisa’s face.
 For hundreds of years, people have
been fascinated by her expression.
 Is she happy?
 Is she looking at you or at something
else?
 What do you think she might be
thinking?
“One can have no smaller or greater
mastery than mastery of oneself.”
– Leonardo da Vinci
Self-Portraits: Take a Good Look
at Yourself
 Sometimes an artist paints a
portrait of himself.
 This is called a self-portrait.
 A self-portrait doesn’t have to
look like a photograph.
 You can paint yourself in many
different ways and each way will
say something different
 About the way you fell about
yourself
 The way you want other people
to see you.
Vincent van Gogh
 The Dutch painter
Vincent van Gogh
[van GOH] painted
many selfportraits.
 This one shows
him when he was
thirty-six years old.
“Self-Portrait”
 How does van Gogh look to
you?
 Does he seem calm or
worried?
 Are you surprised by the color
he used to paint the shadows
under his eyes?
 The patches of green contrast
with the red of his hair and
beard.
“The only time I feel alive is
when I’m painting.”
– Vincent van Gogh
 Look back for a minute at the Mona
Lisa.
 Do you see what is behind her?
 There's a landscape with mountains
and a river.
 Now look at what van Gogh painted in
the background of his picture –
swirling lines of blue and green.
 Where else can you find curving blue
lines in van Gogh’s painting?
Color Mixing
 Red, Yellow, and
Blue
 Are called the
primary colors.
 You cannot make
them by mixing
any other colors
together.
 You can make
other colors when
you mix them
together
Color Mixing
 Red + Yellow =
Orange
Color Mixing
 Yellow + Blue =
Green
Color Mixing
 Red + Blue =
Violet
Color Mixing
 Red + Blue +
Yellow = Black
 Not all paintings are filled
with bright colors.
 Some artists express
themselves by leaving
bright color out of their
paintings.
 Look at this painting by
the American painter
James McNeil Whistler.
 Many people know this
painting by its popular
nickname, “Whistler’s
Mother”.
“Whistler’s Mother”
Whistler’s Mother
 When you look at the painting,
what kind of person do you think
Whistler’s mother was?
 Does she look like a happy, funloving person, ready to get up
and dance around the room?
 Do you see how the white of her
 Cap
 Cuffs
 Handkerchief
 The white attracts your attention
to her face and hands?
 How would you describe the
expression on her face?
Arrangement in Gray and Black
 Though many people call
this painting Whistler's
Mother.
 Whistler himself gave it a
different title.
 Does Whistler use any
bright colors in this
picture?
 Whistler called this
painting “Arrangement in
Gray and Black”.
“Arrangement in Gray and Black”
“An artist’s career always begins tomorrow.”
- James McNeill Whistler
Hans Holbein
 Some portraits can tell a lot
about a person and the times
in which he lived.
 Look at the portrait called
Edward VI as a Child by Hans
Holbein [HOLE-bine], the
Younger.
 Edwards father was a king,
King Henry VIII of England
(who lived more than four
hundred years ago).
 The writing at the bottom of the
painting (in an old language
called Latin) tells Edward to
grow up to be like his father.
“Edward VI as a Child”
Edward VI as a Child
 In this portrait, Edward is a little
over one year old.
 Is this how most one-year-old
children look?
 What’s the first thing you notice
about this child?
 Some people notice his fine red
and gold clothing his fancy hat
with an ostrich feather.
 Do you see the rattle he holds in
his left hand?
 It’s made of gold!
 Where does young
Edward seem to be
looking?
 Notice how still and
straight he sits.
 How imagine how long it
would take to paint a
portrait like this.
 Do you think the real
baby Edward sat still in
this poise for as long as it
took the painter to finish
the painting?
Francisco Goya
 Unlike the portrait of Edward VI,
this portrait show the boy’s
whole body.
 You might think at first that he’s a
girl, because of his
 Long hair
 Red lips
 Fancy costume
 Little boys in wealthy families
sometimes dressed like this a
couple of hundred years ago.
 This little boy’s name is Manuel,
and his portrait was painted by
the Spanish artist Francisco
Goya [GOI-yuh].
“Don Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuniga”
Don Manuel Osorio
Manrique de Zuniga
 How does Goya draw your
attention to the boy?
 Look at his clothes:
 They are bright red
 A shiny sash is around this
waist.
 Look at the light that seems
to be shining around his
head.
 But there is more to this
portrait than the boy.
 Don Manuel is holding a
string.
 Where does it go?
 Can you follow it down
and see how it’s tied to
the leg of the boy's pet
bird?
 What’s that sitting in the
darkness behind the bird?
 Cats!
 How many cats can
you find?
 You can see two pretty
clearly and if you look
very carefully
 You can see the eyes of
a third cat glowing dimly
just a little above the
other cats’ heads.
 What are the cats
looking at?
 Cats like to pounce on
birds, but does Don
Manuel seem to know
this?
“Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces
impossible monsters; united with it, she is
the mother of the arts and the origin of
marvels.”
- Francisco Goya
Norman
Rockwell
 You get a very different
feeling from a selfportrait painted by an
American artist, Norman
Rockwell.
 In this painting, called
“Triple Self-Portrait”,
Rockwell has fun with
the idea of painting a
picture of himself.
 How many time does
Norman Rockwell show
himself here?
“Triple Self-Portrait”
Triple Self-Portrait
 He paints a picture of himself looking in a mirror to
paint a picture of himself!
 Do you see how in the mirror, his eyes are hidden
by his glasses, but shown clearly in the painting
he is working on?
 In this picture, Rockwell had copies of other
famous self-portraits tacked to the upper right of
his canvas.
 Can you find a self-portrait of van Gogh among
Rockwell’s collection?
“I paint life as I would like it to be.”
- Norman Rockwell
Quarter 2
Texture: Oh, What a Feeling!
 Imagine that you’re holding a
rabbit.
 How do you think it would feel?
 Did you think of a word like
“soft” or “furry”?
 Now imagine that you're
holding a frog that has just
jumped out of a swamp.
 How do you think it would feel?
 Did you think of a word like
“slimy” or “bumpy”?
 When you talk about the
way something feels, you’re
talking about its texture.
 When you describe the
texture of an object, you
might use a word like





“rough”
“scratchy”
“prickly”
“bumpy”
“crinkly”
 Gather some everyday items
with different textures, for
example:










Leaves
Marbles
Nuts and bolts
Cereal
Sponge
Blanket
Cotton balls
Wood
Aluminum foil
Shells
 Feel each object and
then try to think of a
word to describe its
texture.
Native American
Masks
 Look at this Native American
mask.
 This mask was made for a
member of the Iroquois Husk Face
Society.
 The Iroquois Indians wore these
mask in special ceremonies in
which they asked the harvest
spirits they believed in to help the
crops grow.
 Can you tell what the mask is
make of?
Native American
Masks
 Do you see how the artist
has braided strands of
corn husks to create the
pattern of a face?
 The artist left other husks
look so they look like
flowing hair.
 What words can you think
of to describe its texture?
Hold Still!
 You’ve learned about one
kind of painting, called a
portrait.
 Now let’s look at another
kind, called a still life.
 It’s called a still life
because the objects in the
painting don’t move.
 Are people ever included in
a still life?
 No, because after a while
they would move!
Still Life
 Still life’s often
include







 To paint a still life, an artist first has
to decide what objects to paint.
Flowers
Fruit
Books
China
Silverware
Furniture
Other small
objects
 Once the artist knows what to
paint, he or she has to decide
how to arrange the objects.
 What shapes and colors will go
next to one another?
 Where will the light fall?
 Will the still life include objects
with several different textures?
Paul Cezanne
 The other still life, called
Apples and Oranges, is by
a French artist , Paul
Cezanne [say-ZAHN].
 What shapes do you see
in this painting?
 Do you see how Cezanne
outlined the apples and
oranges in dark tones,
which makes it easy to
see their circular shapes?
“Apples and Oranges”
“The Louvre is the book
in which we learn to read.”
- Paul Cezanne
Edgar Degas
 Sometimes artists use texture to make
their art look very real.
 Look at this sculpture, made over a
hundred years ago by a French artist
named Edgar Degas [day-GAH].
 The body of the dancer is cast out of a
hard substance, but Degas has added
other materials.
 The dancer has a shiny satin ribbon in her
hair.
 She wears a tutu of a soft material called
muslin.
 When people in France first
saw this sculpture, they
were shocked.
 They were used to seeing
statues made out of hard
substances like stone.
 They were surprised to see
a statue dressed in
materials that a real person
might wear!
“The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years”
“Art is not what you see,
but what you make others see.”
- Edgar Degas
Jacob Lawrence
 Let’s look at shapes in another
painting, called “Parade”.
 It’s by the African American artist
Jacob Lawrence.
 Look at the people in the bottom left
corner of the painting.
 Now look at the band members
“The Library”
marching in the parade.
 If you could march in this parade,
which costume would you like to
wear?
“Parade”
Shapes in Paintings
 You see more than just shapes.
 What else do you notice in the paintings?
 Can you see shapes in the way the artist has
painted their bodies?
 What shapes does Lawrence use to paint their
bodies?
 Their heads are circles
 From their shoulders down they form boxes like
rectangles.
 Can you find other rectangles in the painting?
 The windows
 The door
 The pattern on the wall
 What do you think you would hear around you?
“When the subject is strong,
simplicity is the only way to treat it.”
- Jacob Lawrence
Quarter 3
Get in Line!

Take a pencil and make a dot on a
sheet of paper.

Now put your pencil on the dot and let
it wander away from it.

Now you have a line.

A line starts with a dot and then goes
somewhere.

Lines come in all types:






Lines can be



Straight
Curved
Zigzag
Wavy
Spiral
fat or skinny
rough or fine
It depends on how the line is made.


Use a sharp pencil and you can make
a fine line.
With a big piece of chalk you can make
a rough line.
Henri Matisse’s Line Drawing
“Florilege des Amours de Ronsard”

Here is a picture made only from lines.

Can you name the animal?

This drawing, called “Florilege des
Amours de Ronsard” is by the French
artist Henri Matisse [on-REE maTEECE].

What type of lines does Matisse use
for the necks of the doves?

Curved lines can seem graceful.

Look for some of the other curved
lines in the drawing.
“Creativity takes courage.”
- Henri Matisse
Get in Shape!
 When lines join together, they make
shapes.
 You are creating shapes anytime
you
 Cut something out
 Draw on paper
 Here is the shape of a person, cut
out of construction paper.
 The shape of a real person can
change as the person moves.
 But other shapes remain pretty
much the same.
 Can you name these
shapes?
 Different shapes can
sometimes make you feel
and think different things.
 Look again at
 The circle
 The square.
 Which one make you think of
something moving?
Circle
 Circles roll
 Think of
 Wheels
 Marbles
 Balls
Squares and Rectangle
 Squares and rectangle
seem to rest in one
place.
 Think of a big rectangular
object, like a refrigerator.
Triangle
 Triangles have
points.
 The points can make
you think of
something moving in
a certain direction.
 It looks like a rocket
rising into the sky.
Grant Wood
 Let’s try something:
 We’re going to look at a picture
 Try to focus our eyes just on the
shapes in it.
 Try not to notice all the colors and
patterns, but instead look at the
way the painter uses basic
shapes in his painting.
 Look at the painting called “Stone
City, Iowa”, by American artist
Grant Wood.
“Stone City, Iowa”
Grant Wood
 Have you ever been up so high
that when you looked down
everything seemed to look like
little shapes?
 Can you tell that we are looking
down in this picture?
 Look at the houses: they look
like rectangles with triangle
roofs.
 What shape does Wood use for
the treetops?
“Stone City, Iowa”
“In making these paintings,
as you may have guesses,
I had in mind something which
I hope to convey to
a fairly wide audience in America –
the picture of a country rich
in the arts of peace;
a homely loveable nation.”
– Grant Wood
A World of Color
 Do you have a favorite
color?
 Let’s look at color in a
painting by the French
artist Claude Monet
[moe-NAY].
 Monet loved light and
color.
 He liked to go outside
and set up his easel and
paint the bright sunlight.
 What is the first color you
notice in Monet’s painting
called “Tulips in Holland”?
A World of Color
 Do you see how Monet
was not worried about
giving each object a sharp
outline?
 For example, look at the
windmill:
 It looks a little blurred.
 Monet was more
interested in creating the
impression of a field of
brightly colored tulips.
“Tulips in Holland”
 Do you remember from Kindergarten how
some colors seem “warm”, such as
 Yellow
 Orange
 Red
 While other seem, “cool”, such as
 Blue
 Green
 Violet
 Do you see how Monet has balanced the cool colors of the sky with
the warm colors of the flowers?
 Which color seems to stand out more?
 (Warm colors like red seem to jump forward, while cool colors like
blue seem to be farther away.)
“Color is my day-long obsession.”
- Claude Monet
“Irises”
 Another still life is called
“Irises”.
 If you look at the way it’s
painted with energetic brush
strokes, you may be reminded
of an artist you met not long
ago when you saw his selfportrait.
 It’s Vincent van Gogh.
 Van Gogh liked to paint still lifes
of flowers, such as
 Irises
 Sunflowers
 Do you find mostly curved or
straight lines on this painting?
Georgia O’Keefe
 Here is a painting by the
American artist Georgia
O’Keefe.
 In this painting, called “Shell No
1”, do you see one type of line
that stands out more than the
other?
 Do you see the spiral line?
 A spiral line is a line that keeps
curving inside itself.
 Put your finger at the center of
the shell and follow the spiral.
Lines in Nature
 Georgia O’Keefe loved things of
nature like
 Flowers
 Bones
 Shells.
 Georgia O’Keefe
 Painted them very carefully
 Often made them much bigger than
they really were so that people
could not miss them!
 For example, the little shell O’Keefe
painted was
 Only an inch or two from side to
side in real life.
 The size of a beach ball in the
painting.
“Shell No 1”
“I found I could say things with color and
shapes that I couldn’t say any other way.”
- Georgia O’Keefe
Quarter 4
People Have Been Making Art
for a Very Long Time
 Pretend that you’re exploring a mountainside.
 You come upon a big, dark hole in the rock: it’s
a cave!
 You take out a flashlight and use it to light your
way as you go inside. It’s cool, damp, and
dark.
 The ground is rough and slippery.
 You almost fall!
 As you throw out your hands to steady
yourself, the flashlight shines on the wall of the
cave, and that’s when you notice something.
 It’s a picture – a small drawing.
People Have Been Making Art
for a Very Long Time
 You shine your light and look closely.
“Cave Painting”
 You see the figures of some animals.
 Who drew these pictures?
 What artist would use the wall of a cave instead of a piece of paper?
 Well, how about an artist who lived long before
paper was invented?
 These pictures on a cave wall were drawn by a
person thousands of years ago.
 Drawing by the world’s
earliest artists have been
found on the walls of caves in
 France
 Spain
 United States
 How do you think these early
people drew pictures of
animals?
 Were the animals important to
these early people?
 You can find out more about
these people in World History
and Geography.
Egyptian Art
 As the cave paintings show, people have been
making art for a very long time.
 Long after the cave
people, but still
thousands of years
before you were born,
the people in ancient
Egypt made works of
art that were
 Beautiful
 Amazing
“The Great Sphinx”
Egyptian Art
 For the ancient
Egyptian, art was
an important part of
their religion
.
“Queen Nefertiti”
Egyptian Art
 If you have read the
World History and
Geography section of
the book, then you
know about some of
the wonderful works of
the ancient Egyptians,
such as
 The pyramids
 The Great Sphinx
 The mummy cases.
“King Tutankhamen mummy case”
Texture in
Paintings
 Some painters use
different ways of painting
to help you imagine the
texture of the objects in
the picture.
 They can paint a dress
that looks smooth or a
mountainside that looks
tough.
 You might not he able to
touch the objects, but
you can imagine how
they feel.
Albrecht Durer
Young Hare
 Look at this
painting called
Young Hare but
the German
artist Albrecht
Durer [AL-brekt
DUR-er].
“Young Hare”
 He used
 Short brushes
 Separate brush
strokes
 Touches of white to
imitate the fluffy
texture of the
rabbits’ fur.
 It almost makes
you want to reach
out and pet it!
Look Closely!
“Piñata”
 You’ve looked at different paintings with
 Colors
 Lines
 Shapes
 Lets’ look at all of them in this painting.
 It’s called “Piñata”, by the Mexican artist Diego Rivera [dee-AY-go
ree-VAIR-ah].
 What colors do you
see in this painting?
 Can you find
different
 Lines
 Shapes
 Point to them and
name them?
“Piñata”
Murals: Painting on Walls
 Most of the paintings
you’ve been looking at
were painted on canvas.
 They are the kind of
painting that you can put
in a frame and hang on
a wall.
 How about painting the
wall itself?
Murals
 Some artists like to paint
murals.
 A mural is a large
painting done on a wall.
 Of course you're looking
at only a small
photograph of the mural.
 The real painting is huge!
Diego Rivera
 He had a mural painted in public places in Mexico City.
 It was painted in 1953 by the Mexican artist Diego Rivera.
 You looked at his painting called Piñata?
“The History of
Medicine in Mexico”
 One mural is call “The History of
Medicine in Mexico”.
 It tells the history of Mexican
Medicine.
 The right side shows the kind of
medicine practiced by the ancient
Aztec civilization in Mexico.
detail from “The History of Medicine in Mexico”
“The History of Medicine in Mexico”
 The left side of the mural
shows how medicine is
practiced in modern times.
 In the center, Rivers painted
the Aztec goddess who was
believed to make things clean
by touching them.
 Why do you think Rivera
chose to put this figure in a
mural about medicine?
detail from “The History of Medicine in Mexico”
“Every good composition [picture] is above
all a work of abstraction.”
- Diego Rivera
Story Time
Text References
Text from
 Hirsh, Jr., E.D. (2006).
What Your 1st Grader
Needs to Know. New York,
NY: Bantam Dell Inc.
 ArtQuotes.net [Online].
Available:
http://www.artquotes.net.
Photo-References
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Page 92 Queen Nefertiti picture is taken from Wikipedia under Creative Commons 2.5 license.
Page 91 Great Sphinx and Pyramid picture is taken from Wikipedia under Gnu Free Documentation
license.
Page 25-29 Color Wheel Pictures is taken from Wikipedia under Gnu Free Documentation license.
Page 99-101 Diego Rivera Mural picture is taken from Wikipedia under Gnu Free Documentation
license.
Page 49-50 Native American Mask picture is taken from Wikipedia under Gnu Free Documentation
license.
Page 63-64 Matisse’s dove picture is taken from Rabley Drawing Centre website located at:
http://www.rableydrawingcentre.com/drawingsandprints/past_exhibitions.html
Page 72-73 Grant Wood’s Stone City Iowa picture is taken from Museum Syndicate website located at:
http://www.museumsyndicate.com/item.php?item=584