Art Audition - Footprints in the Sand (or Tea Bag Art)

I think one of the most fun parts of teaching anything (but art in particular) is trying out new ideas with students and seeing the results. For me, these don't have to be original ideas (but it's fun when they are) just new to me or the first time I have tried them with kids. And I ALWAYS want to "audition" them first at home before introducing them to the classroom. It seems that this is the time of year (2 weeks before school starts) when a lot of these ideas start percolating. I thought it would be fun this year to share with you some of these "art auditions!"

Here we go with the first one:
Footprints in the Sand or Tea Bag Art!!

Last January, following joint replacement surgery, I was told to walk EVERY day, and I have been pretty consistent in following through. While walking in my local park, on the sand and gravel pathway, I noticed the variety of footprints imprinted in the path and thought, "Wouldn't kids have fun with this!"

Step one is to create the sand. Great use for all those used teabags after making ice tea!! Coffee would work, too. Pressing lightly on the bag creates a light beige, leaving the bag a few seconds before lifting up results in a darker tone. Good time to talk about value.

Overlapping the tea bag prints is pretty important for an over all sandy look.

I didn't even wait for the background to dry before printing the soles of a few shoes. In the classroom, kids can trade shoes to make a variety of sole designs. I used pastels that I dragged across the sole and then just printed it on the damp background. If you want to get a little messier you could try this with paint!! I didn't think I wanted to try cleaning paint out of all the grooves, though. **Have plenty of water and paper towels for kids to clean their shoes after printing.

For younger students I would probably stop after they had covered their "sand" with footprints. Older kids could use black Sharpies to outline the patterns on the shoes, as in the example below.

In my last post I had this photo of a local mural where a boy is looking towards the beach through his binoculars. 

I think I would probably have kids discuss this mural, which is on a wall that is walking distance from school, as well as Dr. Seuss', Oh the Places You'll Go! , as a part of this lesson.

Sounds like fun, huh??!!
Hope you are all having fun thinking about getting back into the swing of things!!

Colored Pencil Chevrons in 45 Minutes (or less)

Here is a quick, one session exercise to practice value with colored pencils.

Start with grid paper and mark the points of the chevron like this:

Kids can use a ruler, or just a little pre-marked index card like above.

Once the lines are drawn, the coloring begins! I like the idea of starting with 3 distinct areas to color -- that is 3 different values (light, medium, dark), but you could have students create a greater number of values if you like, but that can be trickier. I think this is a good time to talk to kids about controlling the pressure they put on their pencil (or crayon, if you like that media better).

When the chevrons are colored, cut them out.

Then the fun begins as students arrange the chevrons to make an endless number of designs. I like to share quilting examples at this point for inspiration. The first examples below are using the six primary/secondary colors.

This one is a bit more intricate, using overlapping chevrons to create smaller triangles.

Of course, you can use fewer numbers of chevrons to make quicker designs. This 4-chevron one emphasizes warm and cool colors.

There are MANY quilting books for kids out there, but I particularly like using the book, Eight Hands Round, because it is an alphabet book of different quilt blocks that can lead to many other shapes to explore!!

Floating Spheres at MacArthur Park

For the past week the idea of painted spheres has been floating around in my mind -- just like the painted spheres floating at MacArthur Park (link to post) that I posted about a week ago. In thinking about doing a sphere project with kids, I decided to try out some different media.

I almost never have kids do a project that I haven't experimented with first -- unless it is purely a "discovery" experience. Good thing I tried this one out because my first idea was a flop -- which I am happy to share to spare anyone else from having to try it!!

I thought about tracing circles on the back of wrapping paper, then flipping the paper over and making black lines to define shapes (like the spheres in the lake) and shading the sphere to make it look 3 dimensional. To add to the dimensional illusion, kids would glue the spheres overlapping on (and in slits in) painted acetate.

Well . . .  the tracing part went just fine.

 Then things started to go south! Once I turned it over and tried to color with black on the wrapping paper, the slick surface of the paper got in the way and was tough to get really black; shading for depth was a nightmare (see red sphere below). So I decided to try it on the back side of the wrapping paper (below, left). Again, the slick surface made the color look washed out -- and there is almost nothing I dislike more than faded looking color!!! I tried it with oil pastels -- same thing (and I didn't want this to be a painting project, so I didn't get the paints out!).

OK. Then it was on to the acetate -- except I was doing this over Labor Day weekend and couldn't find any acetate at home, so I tried it with plastic wrap, UHG!! I managed to get through the process, but it would be way too hard for little ones as it kept moving all over the place.

I used acrylic for this. Sorry for the blurry focus!

 Once it was dry, I made some slits in it so the spheres could slip in and look like they were submerged a bit. That part was actually OK.

So then I decided to try making the spheres on regular drawing paper and coloring with oil pastels. This worked much better. This would be a good way to have students practice using different color families (primary, secondary, warm/cool).

Warm colors -- solid

Primary colors (plus a surprise pop of secondary)

 I like to show students how Van Gogh used a "surprise pop of a different color (think about his "Irises" with the one white iris in the field of violets) and invite them to "surprise their viewer" by inserting an unexpected color.

This shows primary with a "pop" of secondary.

Finally, I imagined what these spheres would look like if I used painted papers that I always have accumulated in  

Spring. So, of course, I painted some papers to try that out using warm colors.

A few trees in the background . . . hmmmmm . . . maybe.

 Black outlining for the spheres . . . seemed like a good idea at first, but looking at it now, maybe not.

So what did I learn this Labor Day?? 

• I learned that painting spheres is still fun (I always do     some sort of sphere work each year -- see here and here.) 
• I reaffirmed that auditioning art lessons at home is always a good idea before taking them to the classroom. It's good to know what some of the pitfalls might be!!
• Think I'll try painting left-over laminating film for my water feature before springing for buying acetate. That might work better!
• I'm also thinking that this would be a smashing collaborative project, where kids could design spheres and make a GIANT lake collage with them!!

Isn't it fun that we can keep on learning forever??!!!!

Tints, Shades and Big Sky Country

Clouds, clouds and more clouds . . .

Montana is such a great place to appreciate the sky and clouds. When you need a picture of clouds and the sky is clear, you just wait a little while and then go outside and there they are, rolling in and bringing some thunder and lightning with them. 

Notice how the sun back lights the clouds. This is what I like to focus on in this lesson. It works with the moon, too!

I LOVE giving kids pictures like this to use for value/color experiments.

First, they create a sky background -- either dark to light like the photo below, or concentric circles around a moon or sun (like the first photo above).

Then come the clouds, also dark to light. I like to provide students with lots of photos to use as reference because the light is different in each setting.

When everything is dry, they cut out the clouds, leaving a border of white paper around part of the clouds for the back light, and arrange them on their sky, as in the first photo above.

Pretty soon we have LOTS of storm clouds brewing!!

What else does Montana scenery provide for the art room? Well, how about these:

1. I like this for foreground, mid-ground and background with strong colors in the front and pale colors in the back. It also illustrates large items up close, smaller items in back.

 2. Here is another example of larger trees up close, smaller trees in the distance. 

 3. I do love river rocks and find that they are a good way for kids to practice shading and shadows either with "real-life" colors or Fauve-like hues. More on that later:))

Hope everyone is enjoying the last few weeks of summer vacation before it is time to start thinking of re-booting for school:))

A Few Pumpkin Results for Thanksgiving Week

A few weeks ago I posted a lesson titled "Pumpkins in Puddles" where students used watercolor markers and plain water to make reflection drawings. (click here for steps)

When I did the actual lesson in class, I had this assortment of squash and gourds for kids to see and touch. I also had this photo displayed on the Smartboard so that everyone had a good view.

I asked them to imagine any of these outside on the ground after a rainstorm, when the sun came out. What would they see? -- A reflection, of course. 

Students drew their pumpkins, etc. on a fold line in the center of their paper (just regular copier paper) using Crayola watercolor markers (Classic set). I emphasized shading and leaving white highlights where the light hit the top of each squash. Then they brushed water on the bottom of the paper, folded the dry half onto the wet half, pressed thoroughly and VOILA!! Reflections everywhere!!

As you can see, we talked about overlapping, shadows and blending colors. I also mentioned that their final results would look different once they added the water and that it was a bit of an experiment in that sense.

Happy Thanksgiving!!