Elgin Public Schools Logo

2020 First Grade Fall Trees

September 19, 2019

The First grade Art students have been busy creating fall trees with crayon and watercolor.  They learned how to draw a tree by using the letter "Y" for the trunk and branches.  Next, they focused on the leaves by drawing a "smile" and a "frown" to create the football shape of a leaf.  The class drew their leaves in red, yellow and orange colors.  Some of the leaves were hanging on the tree, some falling through the air and some had landed on the ground.  

The next step was to paint the sky and ground with watercolor paint and water.  The students learned that since water and wax do not mix, the wax crayon drawing would resist the watercolor paint and they could paint right over their drawing.

The last step involved sprinkling salt on the wet parts of the sky and ground.  The salt attracts the pigments in the paint and creates a texture.  After the painting dried the students brushed the salt off the painting to finish it.   The last step was to mat their paintings.  Students glued their painting in the corner of a dark blue piece of paper leaving a quarter inch border on two sides.  The other two sides were trimmed by the teacher on the paper cutter.  Next they glued the painting to a piece of black paper  and this layer was trimmed to fit as well to finish up their mat.