4rd Grade Art Lesson: Frank Stella and Lines

This year my daughter is in 4th grade and her teacher has graciously allowed me to come in and teach art to her class.  Today was our first lesson.

During the year, we'll be studying the seven elements of art and I decided to start with lines.  We used only paper and pencils as materials. I like to include an artist with each lesson and choose Frank Stella.

I was not able to secure the art room and needed a lesson that wouldn't utilize messy materials.  Since this was some of the students first time meeting me, having an easy lesson to start also allowed me more time to memorize names and observe listening styles of the kids.

We started by talking about the seven elements we'd be learning about in the coming year. I explained that artists use these seven elements to create art, and we'll be going through them, starting with lines.

I told them that lines can be bent into curves and broken into angles to create an infinit number of configurations.  These include zigzag, curve, wavy, spiral, scalloped, etc.  We listed more types of lines together.

Then we went on to getting to know the American artist Frank Stella, who currently lives in New York City, NY.  He was born in 1936 in Massachusetts to a doctor father and a mother who was a landscape painter. He went on to study history at Princeton University before moving to NYC in 1958 after gradation.

Frank Stealla, Sinjerli, III, 1968

Frank Stella didn't feel that a painting had to represent or look like anything but a painting.  He was quoted in the early 1960s as saying a canvas was "a flat surface with paint on it - nothing more".  His work is known for being abstract and minimalist.

Frank Stella, Star of Persia, II, 1967

We looked at a few of his pieces and talked about the size since most took up whole walls.

Frank Stella, Harran II, 1967

We moved on to our art lesson by first talking about henna and how some cultures use lines it to decorate hands on special occasions. I told them that for today's lesson, they were going to outline their own hand and arm and decorate it with as many types of lines as they can fit in.

Here are a few of the masterpieces:

A few were able to finish early and had time to come up to the front of the class to list all the different types of lines they included in their arms and hands.

The kids were great. They really got the concept of lines and how to use them to create minimalism art.

More art lessons can be found checking out past Art Lesson posts. See you in two weeks!