Paper Bag Elephants

I wanted to do something with the scraps from our shaving cream project, 

and came up with this multi-media project, inspired by this post.

The kids looked at photos of elephants and discussed their features.

They drew a simple elephant onto a brown paper bag. 

The drawings were traced in black ink.

Using a wet paintbrush the black outlines were smeared to give the paper a grayish tint.

After drying and being cut-out, the elephants were gently crumbled.

They were flattened back out, but wrinkles were left resembling the wrinkles in an elephant's skin.

On another paper, African sunset landscapes were created, using oil and chalk pastels.

The colorful frame (saved from our shaving cream project) and paper bag elephant were pasted onto the African landscape to complete this project.

The Art Room

Nothing beats having a room in the house called "The Art Room".

There is no shortage of art supplies here.

My little artists have everything they could need at their fingertips.

For some reason I love clear jars. It's a bonus that displaying supplies this way eliminates the searching or trying to remember where things were stored. 

These handy caddies were meant to be herb planters.

I found them in the garden section at Kirklands and grew some crayons and stuff instead.

The walls are painted a very light gray (Sherwin Williams - Cold Morning).
One of my current obsessions is spray painting and repurposing items instead of buying anything new.
I found a few white spraying painting projects in this room....

the shelves, table, stools, pots, cubbies (pretty much everthing). I like the way the colorful art supplies look against the light walls and all that white. 

Birch Trees Project

The kids really liked this project.  It was my take on a project I saw at a faithful attempt.
Despite having many steps it actually only took about an hour to complete (including drying time with the help of the Arizona sun).

This project included:

Tape and rubber cement masking

Oil pastels

Watercolor

Salt texture

Paint scraping

The Step-by-Step:

Use tape to mask where the trees will be. Be sure the tape touches the top of the page. Trim the bottoms different lengths (good time to talk about foreground, middle ground and background).

Drip or paint rubber cement across the page in wavy wind-like designs (to be rubbed off later.)

Use oil pastels to draw some detail lines on the ground. Most of the kids choose greens for grass. Ella used browns to create a rocky ground.

Using a wide, flat brush, paint the sky with watercolor working back and forth in rows of different colors. Use plenty of water and paint wet-on-wet so the colors blend together.

Paint over the ground to fill in around the oil pastels. 

When the ground is dry, paint diagonal shadows under the trees.

Sprinkle sea salt on wet paint for texture.

Let it dry. Be patient.

Peel off tape and use a rubber cement pick-up to remove the rubber cement.

Dip the edge of a stiff card (like a credit card) in black paint. 

Carefully place the card on the edge of a tree and drag it across.  I had the kids practice this technique first on another page to figure out how much paint was needed and the best way to swipe the card.

Our Birch Trees:

Rainbow Art Party- Make an Art Gallery

The party-goers displayed their creations in the Gallery until time to leave.
To make this, I covered a picture on my wall in wrapping paper and hot-glued on dollar store clothespins. I didn't have any plain wrapping paper, so I turned it over and used the white side.
See more of Ella's Art Party here.

Pop Out House (Paper Cutting Project for Kids)

This project was inspired by the book "The Big Orange Splot". The story is about one man's unique house on a street of boring, cookie-cutter houses. 

Each artist was encouraged to design their unique house. 

In contrast, the other houses on the street were to be boring and alike.

In order for the house pop out correctly, it must be drawn an inch longer on the bottom. The photo above shows how the drawing should look when lying flat.

After drawing and coloring their picture, they folded the paper along the ground line and then cut along the right and left sides of the house to make their house pop out. 

Kid Art - learning about pencils and shading

Use shading feathers as a fun way for kids to learn about different pencils.

Draw the feather.

Have the kids draw the center line and outline of a feather. 

Divide the feather into sections with lines shaped like a "v".

Shade the feather.

Begin shading at the bottom of the feather with the softest pencil and work upward.

Start each new section with heavy pressure and gradually ease the pressure until reaching the next section.  Switch pencils at each new section transitioning from soft to hard.  (8B,6B,4B,2B,B,HB,2H,3H,4H)

Blend the feather. 

Blend one side of the feather with a tortillon.

Also try:

Shade half a feather with the softest pencil and the other half with the hardest pencil.

Shade a feather with any one pencil and blend one side with a tortillon.

My Art - a few things I drew this week

Quick drawing of my favorite girl from a snapshot.

Markers & Colored Pencil

The Dog in the Moon Art Project

This mixed media project included:

Eye dropper painting

Splatter painting

Shaving cream painting

Watercolor wash and salt texture

Collage

Drawing

Each artist created a simple line drawing of a dog.

Using an eye dropper, they traced their pencil lines in black watercolor.

They dipped paintbrushes in the leftover paint to splatter spots on the dogs.

While the dogs dried outside, they worked on the background.

A page was covered in black watercolor wash

and sprinkled with sea salt while it was still wet. This page was also set outside to dry.

Another paper was used for the shaving cream painting.

Each artist sprayed a plate with shaving cream and smoothed it as best as possible.

They each choose 3-4 colors of paint and squirted them across the shaving cream.

Using toothpicks they swirled and mixed the paints together.

A blank paper was pressed down on top of the mixture.

After letting the mixture sit on the paper for a minute, each artist scrapped off the shaving cream and an unique paint pattern was left behind. A large circle (moon) was drawn and cut out of the shaving creamed paper and pasted to the black background page.

After the dogs were cut out, they were assembled and glued to the moon.