Outside my window

We're still working on H's book. Monday she decided that her next "important thing" would be a window. Luckily, the Usborne book had another great project for me to adapt. ..

We did a lesson on how far-away things look lighter and greyer than object close up. Showing perspective with color is one on the easiest ways to create depth in a painting.

We practiced mixing colors and painted a background of hills. After that was dry, we painted the window frame and bars and curtains. We painted a flower pot for her window on a spearate piece, cut it out and glued it on. The leaves of the plant are painted on the background and highlighted with chalks.

This is an easy project to do, but still allows for a fair amount of latitude on the part of the young artist. Neither of my kids really likes to have a totally prescribed painting to make. They chose the color of their hills, H choosing (what else?) pink and purple. E chose to make a southwest scene. They chose the style of their curtains, their color, and the object for their window sill. I am happy that E is finally getting out of the use-every-color syndrome. He is finally thinking about what colors might work together in his picture. His choices aren't always what I would make, but at least we aren't living in rainbow land anymore. Lol

I just did predictable-green hills, but they are fine and gave me a good opportunity to show the kids what I meant about color mixing.

I love how these pictures came out. Our little museum is already getting quite full!

His picture isn't quite finished, but I'll put it up anyway...I love the canyons!

Materials:

Paper

Paint (I used Bio Color. Acrylic or tempera would do nicely.)

Brushes

Landscape photos that show 'layers' of hills, mountains, etc.

Tips on procedure:

I started them off looking at some photos. That way we were able to see what things "really" look like. They picked their color for their hills, and we painted lightest to darkest. Don't foget that is only takes a few drops to tint a white base, so add your darker color little by little. Make 3-4 layers of hills, varying the height and contours.

Make sure the background is completely dry before adding the other details.

Oh, and I did help to steady H's hand while she painted the window bars. She never would have been happy with lopsided ones, and I wanted her to feel proud of her picture.

The important Thing...

H and I are enjoying working on a little book for her. We are using Margaret Wise Brown's The Important Book as a jumping off spot and patterning H's book after it. Brown's book has a different everyday object for each page and the text goes something like this:

The important thing about a spoon is that you eat with it.

It's like a little shovel,

You hold it in your hand,

You put it in your mouth,

It isn't flat,

It's hollow,

And it spoons things up.

But the important thing about a spoon is that you eat with it.

So H chose different subjects and we wrote about them: herb gardens, flowers, Easter dress, pillows... It is interesting what she thinks is "important" about each thing. Some match what I would have said, but often it is different. It is fun to have a little window into her brain.

She wants to illustrate each page and compile it into a book, so we'll be working on that for a bit I imagine. She has been into drawing fancy dresses of late too, so we illustrated that page first:

The important thing about an Easter dress is that it is fabric.

You can put it on.

It is pretty with ribbon on it and bell sleeves.

You can hunt Easter eggs in it.

But the important thing about and Easter dress is that it is fabric.

I thought the techniques in the Doodle Bug activity would work well for this one, so that's what we used. The background is all chalk pastel and the detail work is in watercolor pencils that were carefully retraced with a wet brush.

What's ooey gooey and colorful?

Fingerpainting!!

Is there anything quite as satisfying to a young child as squishing paint between his fingers? Probably not. There is also probably nothing quite as nerve wracking to mom! It doesn’t have to be, though. I started my kids with finger painting at about 20 months. This is a fantastic exercise for building gross motor skills, and even fine motor skills when they are a bit older. The swooshing patterns are rather hypnotic to the preschooler, and the options for color and pattern are quite varied. Cleanup isn’t as bad as it might seem if you just strip them to a diaper, put an old towel underneath them, and plan on bath time fun afterwards. (Note, though, that you want to get WASHABLE finger paint so that it is less likely to stain cloth and skin.)

Still not convinced that you want to tackle finger paint? Just think about having the little art and prints that your toddler’s chubby little dimpled hands made after he’s grown big. The picture above is a collage of at least 20 different fingerpaintings that my son did when he was tiny. It was his first art, and I didn’t want to just chuck it, but honestly, what does one do with that many fingerpaintings? I cut my most favorite parts out of each and glued them, collage style on a board and stuck it in a frame. I still love it! One of the little squares of green has a swipe of all four of is fingers. The swatch is only a few inches wide–how little he was! Some of the rest of the papers I saved for use in collages over the years.

Ok, so how does a mother finger paint with a 2 year old and not lose her sanity? First, do this activity over something besides carpet. We were always in the kitchen. And, wear old clothes yourself so accidental bumps into a glob here or there isn’t a disaster. Second, teach your child the ‘scrubbed doctor’ pose with his hands. You know, hands held up in front of his body, not touching anything. That is the pose to assume when they need a new sheet of paper or are walking to the sink for a clean up. Third, I taught the mantra "Only on the paper!" Both of my children were always very careful and only once ever deliberately painted something they weren’t supposed to. There were a couple of smudges on the counters and such, but never anything that made me crazy. Even my silly, precocious child was careful since she knew a deliberate mess meant no more paint, markers, or whatever. So, honestly, it wasn’t all that messy or crazy-making. If you still think the house is no place for finger paint, what about the yard with a run through the sprinklers afterward. Now that would earn you the title of World’s Coolest Mom!
The Details...
As far as the actual method for painting, I just taped down some paper, sprinkled with water, and glopped on some paint. One color first, then we built up to more colors. I know some people have their kids make actual pictures with fingerpaint, and I’ve seen some good ones. But I always preferred to just let the kids mess around with the paint at this stage. I didn’t want to restrict their creativity or exploration since kids’ capacity for just smearing the paint into patterns seems boundless. There is plenty of time for ‘real’ artistic instruction. Right now we are just getting the hang of having a fun, colorful, productive experience without making mom crazy. That’s enough restriction...
You might show them, however, different things they can do–swirls, stripes, prints... If you are very brave you might let them try patterns and prints of other parts of their body–elbows, forearms, nose, even a foot. I never actually did this...My mother the preschool teacher said it was great for coordination, but my thought was that if I allowed it once I would have a hard time not allowing it another time when I didn’t want the mess. So we threw balls for coordination instead. :o)
An alternative or additional method of doing finger paints with your kids is to get the bath paints that are available. My kids loved them.
Other Tips:
*The Paper:Use great big sheets of paper. Don’t try to be skimpy, your child will only run off the paper and make a bigger mess (ask me how I know!). A cheap alternative to fingerpaint paper is freezer paper. It’s also more readily available at your supermarket than art paper. Tape the paper to the table on all corners before painting begins.
*The Paint: Just buy red, yellow, blue, and white finger paint. The paint is $2-3 per jar, but it will last you through several kids. The rest of the colors can easily be made by your child mixing them together. I have heard of people making their own by cooking cornstartch and water into a goo and adding washable tempera paint. I’ve never tried it, though, so I don’t know how it works.
*Keep a dish of water handy and sprinkle a few drops on the painting when the paint is getting tacky. It will revive the paint for a few more minutes so the child can finish his work.
*Have a spot ready to put completed paintings. I actually just un-stuck them from the table and taped them to the window above our art spot. It was high, out of the way, and any wayward paint was easily wiped off later.
*I know some people put a toddler in a high chair. We never had a highchair, but I am thinking that the relatively restrictive space of the tray might actually cause more mess than it solves. I don’t know...Don’t discount using a regular table, perhaps with a booster seat, or kids’ sized table to allow them to spread out a bit.
*Above all, have fun with you little one and be amazed at his creations–he certainly will be!

Welcome, Homeschool Art Lessons Members!

Thank you for coming! I am hoping to update this blog more often with Art projects, and perhaps with some other homeschoolish endeavors too... Little by little I'll convert the old lessons over to this blog, as much as anything as a record for my kids of their creations. I will post them with the original date that I added them to the Yahoo! site so that they don't bump the newer posts down. This Welcome message will stay up for a couple weeks...just scroll down for new posts.
I hope that you enjoy the new projects as they come.
Now, to write the first installment...

Doodle Bugs

The kids have been really into catching insects lately. They are continually running to me in the yard to show me some creepy crawly or other. After catching about 25 baby grasshoppers yesterday, I decided it was time to do some bug art.

This project is more or less patterned after a project in the Usborne Art Skills book( p273 I believe). But instead of using inks we used watercolor, and I also incorporated watercolor pencils rather than ink or chalk for the details. I think they came out really cute. More importantly, the kids had some great opportunities to practice with several different media.

Procedure:

First things first, we painted a frame around our paper with watercolors. Paint the first color on dry paper so that it doesn't bleed into the middle. You can come back and paint other colors on the wet frame and let them blend if you want to. You can't tell from the scans, but we had some cool metallic watercolor that we used in some places.

While the frames were drying, we read a book about insects. We talked about the various body parts, the fact that insects have 6 legs, the different types of mouths, etc. We looked at the patterning on some of them and drew a few sketches. We also talked about symmetry and practiced a few examples. (Art, Science, and Math all in one lesson? Yay!)

By this time, our frames were dry and we started on our bugs. Using 3 shades of chalk pastels, we shaded and blended the bug bodies. Using a color to contrast with both the bug and the frame we shaded around the bug, adding a couple areas of other colors. Then wee blended the backgrounds, being careful not to smudge the bug too much.

Next came the watercolor pencils. These look like regular colored pencils, but they will blend with water. You can use these many ways, but here's what we did...We outlined our bugs and made designs on them in a dark color, pressing hard. Taking a small brush dipped in clear water, we carefully traced over the pencil lines, blurring them slightly. This made the pencil lines look more 'part of' the picture instead of just sitting on top of, and apart from, the picture. If you don't have water color pencils, you can try less detailed designs with bright watercolor and a small brush or chalk pastels. That, in fact, is what the Usborne book suggests, but I think the pencils allowed the children alot more control, which they really wanted on this project. My kids drew strongly on our Line and Design Lessons and came up with some beautiful, well thought out patterns for their doodle bugs.

After the bug was all designed, we came back with pastel chalks and added a few slashes and squiggles to the frame using colors from the bug and background.

A few flicks of watercolor to add a little more texture, and the pictures were complete.

Time:

This project did take us about 1.5 hours this afternoon, maybe even 2 hours for my slower artist, but they both really enjoyed it. You could also easily split it up into 2 or mor sessions when you switch media. We tend to be marathoners, though, no matter what the subject we are studying, so we did it all at once.

Your Pre-K kids can experiment with these media while you are doing more detailed work with older kids. Let them watercolor one day. When it is dry, they can use bright chalks to shade and mark over the painting. If they are open to suggestions, show them how to choose contrasting color chalks to go over the watercolor. For instance, on a dark spot they can use light colors which will really pop off the page. On light areas of paint dark colors will look vibrant.

Materials:

Insect book (optional)

Watercolor paper

Watercolors or inks

wide brushes and fine brushes

chalk pastels

Watercolor pencils

By the way, the bug at the top left is E's (7 yo), Next is H's (5yo), and then mine...

Line and Design

Here is a lesson I posted over at the yahoo group nearly 2 years ago. (Can't believe it's been that long!!) I re-did this with my daughter this winter, so I am updating and adding her new pictures. This lesson is probably one of the one we have referred to the most over the years. My children love to make patterns and designs. E, especially has utilized this skill over and over, making frames for his pictures, designs on paper airplanes...you name it! It is a really useful beginning lesson, since you can incorporate the skills in many other lessons. I need to do an extension of it now, talking about line in composition, but that is for another day...These pictures at the top are from E. He was 5 when he made the first one and close to 6yo when he was making these paper airplanes.

MATERIALS1/4 sheets of paper (smaller canvas is less daunting)markers--Limit the palette to encourage focus on design, not color...

PROCEDURE:

*Discuss the different types of lines--vertical, horizontal, wavy, dotted, etc.

*Discuss Repetition and its importance to making a "design" rather than just random lines

*If age appropriate, discuss patterns with the lines (dot, dash, dot...straight, straight, wavy...etc.)
*Each artist should create his own Design Card (you too, Mom!)

Suggested "Rules":

*If you make a line, you must repeat it at least once

*Use as many different colors as you like, but use each at least twice

*No "coloring" on this project (don't solidly fill an area with color, add another line or design element if there is room)

*Help with gentle prompts as necessary... "That's a nice line. Now let's repeat it with another color. Can you add another type of line? (diagonal/curved/dashed/etc) Can you put any dots or lines betwen those two lines? That's a neat pattern, can you continue it?"

These 2 belong to my daughter. The first is from when she was 3 years old. The next one is from this winter at 5 yo. I was absolutely blown away by her radial design, totally her own idea! She actually completed that one after I had finished the lesson and left the table. She must have made 15 pictures that day!

EXTENSIONS:*Look at illustrations in books which make use of lines to make design*Go to a fabric store and look for lines which form designOther Sources of Line/Design discussions...Ukranian Easter Eggs, Wallpaper books, Wrapping paper, pottery/dishes, traditional patterns from India, Egypt, Native America, etc often use repetition and motifs...*Encourage the use of Line and Design in a current or new project. My son loves making paper airplanes (whether they fly or not!). He used lines to decorate them. *Design Quilt Blocks for the Collaborative Quilt Lesson...see "extensions" in that lesson for details...

Pre-K series

I started doing art with my children well before they were 2 years old. I have had several moms say to me over the years that they are amazed by how much I did with my children so young. It's not really amazing, at least I'm not amazed by it... Little toddlers and preschoolers are a sucker for anything that makes a mess or is colorful. Put the two together and they are bound to enjoy it. The real issue is whether or not Mom enjoys it!

I will freely admit that I am on the type B side of the spectrum. Mess doesn't really bother me all that much. But, in truth, my toddlers' art experiences played a very small part in the chaos that sometimes overcame my household. I have no permanant evidence on my carpet or walls of our art projects. I do, however, have permanent evidence on my children's hearts of the joy of creating. My little efforts over the years were a small price, indeed, to have confident, artistic 5 and 7 year olds. I have wanted to blog more about my kids' early years for some time, so I hope you'll indulge me some space for reminiscing about our early art, and in the bargain I'll try to give some tips and inspiration for you to involve your tots in your art escapades.
Look for "Pre-K Series" posts to follow. ..I'm not sure how many, I'll just keep going with what I think of...

3-d Paper Abstract

Here is a fun, easy project that we did a few weeks ago to get back in the artistic swing of things.


Essentially, we just fooled around with paper to make different shapes, played with their arrangement and then glued them down. The kids had fun with this project and even named their creations.

To see the dimension better, I took the following pictures at an angle:

E's Burning Black River:













H's Tidal Wave














First, I had them choose a 3-color pallette of adjacent colors on the color wheel (red, orange yellow & Green blue purple were their decisions). I did this to keep the project from becoming one of "let's see how many different colors I can cram on a page". My son, especially, would go with that if given the option, and my daughter would just make everything pink. Not that that's bad, but I wanted a little more effort toward composition.

Next, the day before our art lesson, we took the time to paint a piece of paper with different combinations of the chosen colors. They mixed the colors, painted patterns of squiggles, dots, and swirls on top of different sections, and just generally had fun with the paint. This paper will be getting ripped up in the next part of the lesson, so I made sure they knew not to get too attached to their masterpiece. After these papers were dry and the kids were in bed I painted the back of their papers quickly with a color from their pallete so that no white paper would show. This whole step is not strictly necessary, but I wanted my younger child to have some experience with mixing colors, and these patterned papers do make the final project interesting. If you only want to spend one session, though, you could just use construction paper for the whole project and it would be fine.

Next we tore our different colored papers, folding and creating shapes as we went. Kids, at least mine, often get caught up in precision work when they are using scissors. I wanted them to focus more on the colors and composition, not specific representative shapes, so we tore our papers instead.

Finally, we glued them down. We tried to keep one color from being adjacent to the same. As the kids created their art, suggestions of subject evolved, wave for H's and fire for E's. They then glued on more elements to reinforce this impression.

As they worked and talked about subject for their pictures I interjected a little bit of warm/cool color theory. Warm colors are often used for energetic, hot, agitated subjects. cool colors are often used for relaxing, cold, quiet images. Fortunately for me, their ideas of titles for their work played into this theory well. This was a little added bonus of art theory discussion which I had not planned. It's optional to discuss, but worked for us.


Some ideas for 3-d folds:

fan, accordion, curlique (wrap around pencil), fringe, crumpled balls, flat paper glued onto an accordion to 'pop' off the page, tubes...






Extensions:

My plan is to re-visit this assignment at a later date with complementary colors to see the difference in the affect.

Also, all these paper folds can be nicely incorporated into other projects such as masks or a 3-d picture. I am thinking that my son would like an under sea picture complete with curlique waves and twisted sea weed...

A Note about Preschoolers:
Obviously, this is fun to do with little ones, just don't worry so much about composition with them. I would probably still limit their color pallette, though. Here's a great bonus: All this manipulation of the paper is FANTASTIC for their fine motor development!

Materials:
White paper and paints (optional)
construction paper to rip
construction paper for background
glue
strong little fingers :o)

First Chalk Pastels

Wow! Who knew?

I've never really liked chalk pastels myself. They're just so...chalky. A good kids' art teacher in the area uses them exclusively for her beginning students, though, so I thought I would give it a try with my kids. They have played with (made a mess with) them before, so we jumped in to making pictures. If your kids have never played with chalk pastels, I would recommend giving them the opportunity to just try out the colors, shading and blending a bunch. It may (and probably will) turn into muddy brown, but that's part of the learning process...

Here is H's first picture trial (the close-up daisy) and her second flower garden one. I did help just a bit with hers on the lady bug head, but the rest is her work. I think it's beautiful!

E's (7yo) is the fish picture at the top of the post. He is really into fish these days, having gotten some for Christmas and one having just had fry. I've promised him a fish picture for some weeks and decided to try it with the chalks. I love it! In fact, I like his a good deal better than mine! The picture is all his, with a few pointers here and there from me. He did ask me to outline it for him, though, so I did...Here is my fish picture, for what it's worth. Really, I much prefer E's...

Tips:

*I like to use colored paper for chalk pastel work. I love the way the colors stand out and are so vibrant against it. It also helps keep the picture from looking unfinished if the kids miss spots or decide not to do a background, as especially little children often will.

*Use at least three tones for every area--light, medium and dark--to give depth interest.

*Add details after blending

*Spray the finished picture with hairspray (aerosol is best) to help keep down smudges.

Materials

Paper with a "tooth" (construction paper works just fine.

Chalk pastels-lots of colors. about 50 is good

Hairspray to set the finished product

Egg Time!

Last year I posted a bunch of ideas or making your Easter Eggs. My kids never just dye theirs on Satuday before Easter like I used to. They always spend a couple weeks painting them or other wise creating them. We use blown out eggs so that we can save and enjoy them for a while.

They use many of the techniques that I did with my classes last year, but we try new things as well.

Here's one we did that I thought was pretty:

Tissue and Watercolor Mache

H wanted to do the tissue paper eggs that we did last year, but I am out of colored tissue. I did have white, though, so I had a brainstorm...

I have a product called liquid watercolors that are essentially dyes. I get it from Discount School Supply, but you could use food color diluted with a little bit of water as well. I put a little white glue in different segments of our paint palette, added a little bit of liquid watercolor and stirred it up. Just like with papier mache, it should be mostly liquid, not terribly gluey. We dipped the edge of a bit of torn tissue into the colored glue-water, let it wick up the tissue and laid it on the egg. We kept going with different colors until the egg was all (or mostly) covered with tissue and let it dry. The colors blended and the wrinkles in the tissue made neat patterns. It's a little less predictable of an outcome than with the tissue paper technique of last year, but I like it...

Materials

eggs

white (or light colored) tissue paper

liquid watercolor or food coloring

white glue

palette or small bowls

Kid's Flower Resist paintings

I love how these came out. E (7yo) is the horizontal one. H(5yo) did hers vertically.

E is my planner. He likes to have everything laid out like a civic engineer, hence he always has lots of straight lines and not much overlap. H is more capricious, and her work reflects that, sticking in an extra flower here or there as she has a new idea. It is so neat to see how their art reflects aspects of themselves.

Spring Nature Drawing ~Crayon Resist

(click on the picture to see it large)

This week we took our cue from the fun we had last week with the Color Mixing Jungle. My daughter, H, was especially excited about learning to draw more different kids of flowers, being quite the little flower fairy herself.

We pulled out a favorite book, The Golden Egg Book by Margaret Wise Brown. It has wonderful illustrations of all types of flowers. We also had a field guide handy, but in all honesty, the Egg Book was the bigger hit. We looked through the books and sketched the different types of flowers, noting the different shapes and configurations. After making a scratch paper sketch bank of possible flower types we began sketching on watercolor paper. I made my whole sketch first, but the kids were anxious to begin coloring, so they did some. We started out with crayons, but decided that we would switch to oil pastels in the middle. Either will work with watercolor resist, so choose what you like. Mindful to use several shades for flowers and leaves we colored our drawings, adding an extra blossom or leaf where we wanted to. Remember that light colors (even white) can look especially neat with the resiste technique.
Afterwards, we did a watercolor wash over the page, varying the color and intenstity to add interest. Don't use too much paint or the pigment may obscure some of your crayoning. It shouldn't be too much of a problem, though, if you have colored heavy enough. If you want to, you can sprinkle a little bit of clear water hear and there to make a dappled effect. The kids are still working on theirs so I promised I wouldn't post it yet, but mine is posted as an example...

H (5yo) has already made use of her new knowledge of flower sketching to make pretty Easter cards for her family.

Materials:
flower field guide or
The Golden Egg book by Margaret Wise Brown
watercolor paper (or other heavy stock)
crayons or oil pastels
pencils
watercolors and brushes