Just in the St. Nick of time, fifth grade family portraits have been uploaded to Artsonia for your viewing pleasure! Whether gathered around a menorah, holiday table, Christmas tree, or on the beach, students have portrayed their families in warm, welcoming environments. To begin this unit, which addresses many objectives including perspective, space, figure drawing, color, and art history, we spent an entire class looking at and analyzing 18th century family portraits while considering what life was like in the late 1700s when the portraits were painted. We had lively discussions about clothing, customs, the need for the extended family, and the props the families included in their portraits including Memento Mori and “cardboard babies” (stiff looking children who appear to be miniature adults as in this painting by Robert Feke). Try as I might to convey a little bit of societal perspective around the Age of Enlightenment, my students steadfastly refer to this child as the “demon child”. Very sorry Mr. Feke. Anyway, 5th Grade Family Portraits have been uploaded to Artsonia and can be seen here.

It was also a great time to take a look at the 2 dimensional picture plane and to define space with a simple horizontal line denoting the place where the floor meets the wall. As well, we looked at one point perspective before drawing the table. Paintings were created with watercolor pencils, which I just love for fifth grade on a finely detailed project like this. It affords the control they need to make the picture realize their vision.

This is just a smattering of the artwork on Artsonia. Students have posted about one hundred pieces. Of those, some students are missing parent permissions, so they are not viewable. If you need help setting that up, please contact me. Also, students who have been absent for illness or music lessons are still trying to finish.

Please know that if you choose to order items with your child’s artwork on it from Artsonia, our classroom receives $20 of the cost. I use this money to replenish our supplies throughout the year. For instance, it came to my attention that we had used all the blue and yellow colored pencils and I was able to stock up on those very popular colors. I mean, can you even imagine a drawing of an idyllic day without a blue sky and a sun?