The fourth grade recently finished some Amate bark paintings. This art form is based on Mexican bark painting from the Otomi culture. Amate bark paintings Fourth grade recently finished making ceramic puppets. We talked about making our puppets look like different types of animal and creatures. We made a ceramic head, feet, hands and some students made a tail! We then fired them in the kiln and painted them with acrylic paint. The body is a sewn bag! The Fourth Grade has been looking at the artwork of folk artist Maude Lewis. Maude Lewis was an impoverished woman from The Anapolis Valley in Novia Scotia. Most of Maud Lewis' paintings are quite small - often no larger than eight by ten inches, although she is known to have done at least three paintings 16 inches by 20 inches. Her technique consisted of first drawing an outline and then applying paint directly out of the tube. She never mixed colours. Maude Lewis loved to paint her surroundings. Take a look at some of the paintings we painted inspired by Maude Lewis. George Seurat was born on December 2, 1859 in Paris. His father was a native to Champagne, and his mother was a Parisian.Seurat spent his life studying color theories and the effects of different linear structures. He developed the style of painting known as Pointillism. He had 500 works of art of his own and he was proclaimed to be a master. But it isn't just the number of his works that make him an expert. His magnificent pointillist pieces in make him the famous artist that he is today. The fourth grade spent several weeks looking at and discussing still lifes. We looked closely at this painting by Paul Cezanne, Still Life with Basket of Apples. Most of his paintings are still lifes. These were done in the studio, with simple props; a cloth, some apples, a vase or bowl and, later in his career, plaster sculptures. Take a look at some of our still life drawings we worked on using oil-pastels. Henri Matisse was a French painter who became very famous for using extraordinarily bold colors. Later in life, as his health began to fail, Matisse turned to making collages. His last, and most important works were a collection of mixed-media collages. Matisse arranged boldly colored paper cutouts into striking compositions, and added text in his own handwriting to produce a book that has been referred to as "the visual counterpart of jazz music". Take a look at Matisse at work and some of his finished collages. Here we are hard at work on our Matisse inspired collages. Take a look! [Image:11209_80927_0.jpg] [Image:pointallism 1.jp[Image:paintings 3.jpg][Image:paintings.j