Friday Morning Fun!

This week was a little bit of variety for all ages!   But the natural world was the inspiration for all of us!

 Intro to pointillism with acrylics

Wolf Khan inspired mixed media, oil pastels and watercolor resist.

And yet to be finished water worlds and fish prints based on the Japanese art form. (Gyotaku)

Today we viewed master artist Georges Seurat's painting, A Day in the Park and discussed pointillism.  "P" chose out an image, did some sketching, and then used only dots and primary colors to paint in his image.  It took Seurat two years to complete his masterpiece, "P" finished in a little over an hour :)

Next up my middles viewed the beautiful creations of Wolf Khan.  Then we colored in trees using oil pastels, and worked on creating a horizon line, and a fore ground, mid ground, and background.  Then, using watercolors, the students saw the COOL effects of oil pastel resist.   This works with crayons too.   Color an area, then paint over it.   The resist is so great!

 For more texture, I let them use yellow acrylic paint to fill out the tree leaves!

Now for the Littles!  Thanks again to the moms today.   There were lots of steps, lots of media, and lots of kids, so your help was AWESOME!   I was very excited for this project since it is TOTAL boy.  I mean, come on, you paint a fish!  Perfect exploration for this crew!

One by one, the kiddos took turns making a fish print.

While waiting their turns, the others colored in seaweed with oil pastels...also for watercolor resist!

 Then the liquid watercolor came out and this troop just went for it!  

 Finally, they added salt to create a bubble look to their water worlds!  We'll cut out the fish and put them in the water next week!   I can't believe next week is our last class!

Friday Morning with Wayne Thiebaud

Today's classes were all about DELICIOUS DESSERTS!  I love Wayne Thiebaud, his personality and his artwork.   There are countless ideas floating around out there for lessons inspired by his work.   I used the help of some great ones to create these lessons for my Friday morning crew!  I'm hungry!

Thanks to the art blogs of kids-finelines.blogspot.com, the greenbayartroom.blogspot.com, and the second grade teacher at my kiddos school for helping me figure out the perfect concoction of glue to shaving cream ratio for "frosting!"  It is so amazing!  And so simple!   For moms who want to try it:  Squirt in shaving cream, and pour in some elmers, and a dollop of  paint (I used acrylic), let the kid's stir, and enjoy!  Works great for snow if you keep it white with some silver glitter too!

The "middle crew" worked on casting animal masks during the other classes.  These masks will be for Tinga Tinga art on our last week.

After viewing Wayne's work, my older student and I discussed how to use shading with oil pastels to create dimension in our cake.    This was a good lesson for drawing as well!  He did an AMAZING JOB!   (Background was chalk pastels).

Awesome work with shading!!!

Next up, my "middles" learned out to make and stack cylinders, and then used chalk pastels to color in and design their cakes after a practice run with pencils and scratch paper.

YUM!!!  Beautiful job!

 And my youngest crew!   First we decorated the liners with oil pastels, and added paint to rice to make "sprinkles".

 Then, with the amazing mix of glue, shaving cream, and paint, we stirred our frosting mix, and spread it on!  Even little sis "K" got into the action.

 Sprinkles!

Who wants DESSERT?   Great job boys! (and little "K"!)