Winter Pine Tree Paintings (2nd)

It's beginning to feel like the most wonderful time of the year again.. and you know what that means - WINTER-THEMED ART PROJECTS!

Guys.. this is what I live for! There is something about working on winter art projects that just puts me in a better mood. It takes me to my happy place - a place filled with scarfs, Starbucks coffee, Christmas lights, family time, and 2 weeks off of work! And while all these things might still be a little while off.. it sure doesn't feel like that in my classroom! :)

This whole project came about as I was trying to find a quick 2-day replacement project for my 2nd grade students this rotation. I'm taking two days off to take a trip to the mountains with my hubby.. so I knew there was not enough time to do my usual Winter Value Landscapes project during this rotation. So I hopped onto Pinterest and found this inspiration from Mrs. Werner's Art Room.


I began this project by reviewing color mixing with my 2nd graders. We talked about how primary colors can be mixed together to create secondary colors.. but wait... did you know that you can mix primary and secondary colors to create super awesome tertiary colors!? Well I know you guys know that.. but these darlings haven't been taught about that yet. ;)

After discussing that for a bit, we moved onto working on painting the background for our winter trees. Students were given a palette with the 3 primary and 3 secondary colors in rainbow order and were asked to use 3-4 of them to create concentric circles on their paper that also included tertiary colors. Some students listened.. others went color crazy and used all of them.. but can I blame them? I'd probably do the same thing too. :)

On day 2 we began by talking about evergreen trees and how to paint them. I put up a PPT slide showing a variety of different pine tree paintings.. then showed them how I would approach it.
I painted a black line going up my page (from bottom to top), then used a dry brush technique to "dab the black paint onto the paper" to create some texture for the needles.
To which my students responded with:

Every. Time. I said it. **shaking my head**

Then my kids went back to their seats and got started on their paintings.

After a while I called them back to the carpet and showed them how I could use the same dry brush technique with white paint to add snow to my painting. Then I flipped my brush around and used the handle to print white dots for falling snow.

I gotta say.. I LOVE the results. I came up with how I was going to teach this lesson literally 5 minutes before they walked into my classroom.. so I was super elated when I saw their finished pieces. Success!