Posted by Cindy on March 29, 2010
A local museum offers classes a few times a year that are always lots of fun! The theme this time was butterfly batiks. It was such a great springtime art project, I thought I’d share it with you. I’ll take you through the steps below, but you’ll be looking at three different butterflies since I was snapping shots of all three of my children during the class.
1. Cut out a symmetrical butterfly figure by folding a large piece of paper in half, cutting on the fold and opening again. After observing photos of real butterflies, use oil pastels to color the butterfly heavily. Leave some white space for the wax resist in the next step.
2. Place the colored butterfly in a tub of water and crinkle it up. Shake off the excess water and place the wet butterfly flat on a paper towel. Paint watered down black tempera paint over the entire surface of the butterfly.
3. Use a dry paper towel to blot over the painted butterfly to remove excess paint and water. The result is a wax resist where the black paint clings to the paper, but not the oil pastels.
4. Finally, paste the butterfly on a large piece of paper where your child has drawn a habitat.
Fun! And a great extension to a nature study outing!
Posted by Cindy on March 27, 2010
We spent much of our month with Matisse completing art with scissors since Matisse’s later works were often collages or realistic and abstract art constructed from cuttings.
The artwork below was actually harder than it looks. I asked the kids to use rulers to measure the desired sized blocks of color for the background. The abstract pieces placed on top were folded, cut and opened so that each piece would be symmetrical. (See, I hide math everywhere!)
Henri Matisse
Olga’s Gallery
Warning: There are many nudes!
Paintings We Studied
I chose these paintings by Matisse because we were studying erosion at the time during nature study. Each of the paintings includes erosion of some sort. We had fun looking for and drawing erosion during our nature walks. These painting ideas and the nature walk ideas came from the Everchanging Erosion NaturExplorers unit.
Open Window
Luxembourg Gardens
La Moulade
The Bank
Lesson Ideas
KinderArt Lessons
Paper Collages
Mulit-Media Design
Posted by Cindy on March 23, 2010
This was a fun little activity Eli and I did as we talked about March winds. It’s super simple, too. I colored water with food coloring then let him use an eye dropper to place colored dots on a piece of card stock. He used a straw to blow the colored water all over the paper. He called it his windy painting.
Posted by Cindy on March 2, 2010
We’ve been so immersed in our 1900′s history studies, that Charles Russell took a bit of a back seat this month. We did find the time to practice a little horse drawing, though. Enjoy the resources below!
Charles Russell
About Charles Russell
Paintings We’re Studying
Innocent Allies
Doubtful Handshake
Drifters
Round-up on the Musselshell
Lesson Ideas
How to Draw a Horse
Drawing Horses
Posted by Cindy on January 29, 2010
Seurat is such a fun artist to study! His use of pointillism was the biggest topic during the month, which made for some fun art projects. The painting above was an attempt at recreating an “Alfalfa” style painting (see below) with a mixture of strokes and styles. After using many different tools to create pointillism, we greatly respect how long it must have taken Seurat to finish any of his works created strictly with dots!
Georges Seurat
Olga’s Gallery
Paintings We Studied
La Grande Jatte
The Circus
Cows in a Field
Alfalfa
Books We Read
Lesson Ideas
Pointillism Activity Ideas
KinderArt Pointillism
Art Exercises for Kids
