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...

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

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

Not just a bunch of hot air...

Balloon Stamping

This is an idea from a video on using BioColor ® Paint (which I highly recommend–video and paint, both). Balloon Stamping is one project that toddlers can accomplish quite as well as their older siblings. My kids have really enjoyed this for a couple years. Balloons and paint...what’s not to love?
Of course, balloons are a choking hazard, please supervise your kids. The Biocolor ® video suggests that if you have a very young child whom you don’t trust with a balloon for safety reasons, you can tie the balloon in the toe of an old nylon stocking.

Materials:
Balloons
Paint (Biocolor ®, Tempera, acrylic)
Paper–smooth surfaced
Paper plate, saucer, or container to use for a paint pallete
Masking tape
Stencils (optional)

Procedure:
Inflate balloons to about 3 inches in diameter–about the size of an orange.
Tape paper to the table so that it doesn’t move around.
Choose 3 colors of paint. Squirt dime or quarter sized dots onto the plate/palette. The dots should be touching, pyramid fashion–two touching on bottom, one resting on top of those.
Dip the balloon into the tri-colored paint puddle and pounce it onto the paper. Pounce all over the paper, dipping to the paint as necessary. Encourage the pouncing motion as opposed to a swirling or sweeping motion. A little experimentation is to be expected, though.
Pounce the same spot again to let the paint colors swirl and vein into one another. The more you go over the same spot, the more the colors will mix. The patterns go from harlequin splotches to interesting marbled texture to...mud! There is sort of a fine line between interesting color mixing and glop, and that line approaches and passes quickly. Practice will tell you when to stop. Don’t be afraid to let the kids go too far on a few pages by themselves–this will teach them more than any lecture from mom. If they just can’t seem to find that line by themselves, you might try stopping them two or three times and asking them to rate what they see at that moment–sort of a ‘cool’, ‘cooler’, or ‘ewww’ rating. Hopefully they will begin to see when is ‘enough’ for themselves. Of course, you may just have a student that really likes glop!
This project goes pretty fast. Have enough materials for each student to try 3 or more sheets. I can almost guarantee that they will want to. (Just rinse the balloons in between sheets.)
When you are finished with one sheet lay it on the counter or hang it on a line to dry. At my house, I’ve discovered that an easy way to dry painted items is taped to the window behind our art table...Sometimes, I am hard pressed to see out that window!

Extensions
Use your Papers to cover little paper mache boxes. Or, balloon stamp right on the boxes.
Stamp onto frames.
Use your papers for collages–flowers, fairy dresses, etc.
Balloon stamp over a large stencil without too much detail.
Print a shirt. Using fabric paint, Balloon stamp a stencil onto a smooth flat surface like a cookie sheet. Remove the stencil and then stamp the image onto the shirt. Stamping directly onto the shirt doesn’t work as well because the paint just soaks into the fabric instead of mixing together.

*Use copy paper, tagboard weight, or the paper which comes on a roll. They all work better for this project than construction paper which has a "tooth".

Layered Look Pastels

Chalk with Monoprint
This allows some experimentation time with chalks, but keeps the project small and manageable. Most children love fingerpaint, so incorporating it is a nice addition.

Materials:
1/4 sheets of construction paper (white or colored)
Chalk Pastel Colors
Dark Paint (finger paint or acrylic)
optional: combs to texture the paint
Tray or cookie sheet

Procedure:
Using Quarter sheets of paper, color with chalk colors over the entire surface. Blocks of color/swirls/squiggles, ordered geometric shapes or random scribble, separate colors or overwriting with different colors...What ever they do is fine, but this isn’t the time for a detailed drawing since we are going to cover part of it with paint.
Set your chalk drawing aside and squirt a small amount of paint (about the size of a quarter) onto a tray.
Smear paint onto an area of the tray roughly the size and shape of your chalked paper.
Design with fingers, scrapers, etc. leaving a lot of open (paint-free) space.
Place paper, chalked side down, on the paint design pressing lightly to print. Lift and see the great design!

Tips/Suggestions
Using colored paper eliminates white space, even for children who can’t or don’t want to color the whole paper.
Try different color combinations. I liked the brown paper and brown paint. Try other dark papers with the same dark paint. Bright colors, like yellow paper with black paint look nice too.
Don’t feel that you have to completely cover the construction paper in chalk. A little of the paper color coming through just creates a more complex-looking design with little work.



Expanding this Lesson
*I've had a number of people say that these look like animal fur prints. I imagine if they were done soley in animal colors the effect would be even better. I'm thinking jungle scene collage...

*On subsequent sessions as your students are interested, introduce blending colors, shading, cross-hatching and stippling.

Finishing:
Since the chalks will be subject to smearing, you can laminate/cover with contact paper for protection. A light spritzing of hairspray also helps keep the chalks from dusting off the paper, though of course, it’s not as much protection as the contact paper.

It's all in the Wrist...

Crayon Flicking

Note: This comes out much better than the scanned images show. I had trouble getting the scanner to pick up all the subtle tones created...just trust me and try it!

MATERIALS:

Crayons

Paper--1/4 sheets (small canvas is less daunting)

Tag board 1/2 sheetsv(like file folders--construction paper can be used in a pinch, but is less satisfactory)

Scissors

Stencils, homemade or bought (optional)

INTRODUCE TECHNIQUE

*Place Tag board across paper at any angle.

*Using a flicking motion of the wrist, draw quick lines, perpendicularly off the tag board, onto the paper.The lines should be close together, and should be made with a quick repetition flick of the wrist, not a deliberate line.
*Vary color if desired

*Remove stencil to see a sort of halo-effect lineThis may be the only step young children are ready for.

PROGRESSIVE TECHNIQUE

*Cut a wavy or angled line through the center of the tagboard.

*Proceed with flicking the crayons off the cut edge, being careful to keep the stroke perpendicular to the cut.

*Use both sides of the tagboard stencil (the positve and the negative) and compare the halo-lines created.

ADVANCED TECHNIQUE

*Make (or use store-bought) stencils.

*Use the stencil-flick technique to create a picture.I made a couple stencils to make a sailboat scene. My son really liked it and decided to copy it. This was not an "assignment", just something he wanted to do. I think it came out very well.The heart is a Valentine he made--his own idea. It was made with marker.