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One of the great things about art is you can literally use anything to get creative! Today the Picassos painted an underwater ocean scene. But to add another dimension to our art we talked about the Buccoo Reef in Tobago and how much of our coral has been destroyed by a combination of pollution and mistreatment of the reef by tour operators. They looked at pictures and we got down to our art for the day. I gave them very little direction. I simply put out some ocean colours in tempera and oil pastels and we talked for a few minutes about what we might see under the deep blue ocean. The only rule was not to paint any fish... we have a special plan for adding fish at the end. When the underwater scene was done to their satisfaction I handed out styrofoam trays for them to draw a fish from a very simple one to that was as detailed as they cared to get. So they drew BIG fish, and tiny fish and I even got some eels! When I started saving these trays I really didn't have a plan for them but lucky for us we have them today! My darling hubby has started asking "are we saving this?" before he throws any earthly thing away! LOL.. But I digress as usual... They cut the shapes out, painted them with black tempera and simply pressed them onto the ocean background, creating a school of fish silhouettes! This was so much fun and the kiddos really took charge of their artwork.
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The Doodlebugs painted and printed some beautiful trees today! We talked about what a reflection was and how they can see things reflected on different surfaces. Then we focused on the reflection on water since that's what we were going to paint, and they drew their little scene, painted and then printed their reflections! So our little salt dough project was great fun for the Doodlebugs but it literally took countless hours of slow-baking these little dishes 4 at a time in my oven throughout the week to get them dry enough to paint! Will we do this very often? Probably not! Am I glad we did? Heck yeah! LOL When the Doodlebugs got them back to paint they were so thrilled! They took their time choosing their colours and trying their best not to get brown skin paint on the letters and background paint all over the face! I wish I had better pictures of these marvelous little dishes but they were all still wet so they had to sit in their wax paper backgrounds :/ but they're so adorable I think they can get away with sitting on a shabby piece of wax paper! Don't you? Happy Father's Day daddies! We sure worked hard to make you something extra special! You can find the first part of this lesson here.
For Father's Day the Picassos worked on a simple but beautiful little painting of a father and child (or children) against a background of some whimsical trees! Of course because this was a silhouette painting we discussed what a silhouette is and how light affects what we see. I gave my kiddos the option of choosing how they would like to position their silhouettes. Some of them chose to do simply a dad holding hands with a child, others put the child on the father's shoulders and some included siblings, while others declared the siblings were at home with mummy... this was a special walk for just the two of them! Can't argue with that! Happy Father's Day to all the Daddies out there!  Allow me to introduce Aunty Aurea... my assistant. Aunty Aurea works tirelessly behind the scenes mixing paint, cleaning brushes and keeping our Doodlebugs and Picassos entertained and engaged with her seemingly boundless knowledge of trivia! She is also our main photographer and second in command as keeper of law and order! Today however she is none of those things. Today she is our model. The Picassos had Aunty Aurea sitting as still as I think Aunty Aurea as ever sat in her entire life while they drew and painted her portrait! Needless to say this class was extremely entertaining! At this age portrait making is mostly about getting features in the right position and for some learning and for others practicing that all important skill of observation. So the end result may not be photo-realistic but the process is full of skill-building value and did I mention we had a ball laughing. It's a good thing Aunty Aurea has a great sense of humour! The Doodlebugs have started working on our Father's Day project! It's another 2 part one because it's made of salt dough so it has to be shaped and set aside to dry for a couple days before it can be painted and prettied up! I have one little Doodblebug in particular that really doesn't like leaving his artwork behind... I don't blame you buddy but I promise I'll take good care of it! lol... So anyway check out what they've done so far! We're making a little dish for daddy to decorate his desk or maybe his nightstand? Daddies? Ideas? It's super cute and made with love so it doesn't matter where you put it and boy did they have fun making it! Flexing those little fingers and stretching the dough! Take a look at what they've done so far :) This week the Picassos looked at one of the elements of art VALUE. Value is the degree of lightness or darkness in a colour or hue. Artists use value to manipulate space (another element of art) because the further away things are the lighter they appear. This phenomenon is called atmospheric perspective... Phew! That's our big art term for the day and it simply means how we see the air around us! We discussed how things appear to fade off into the distance because of dust, humidity or even air pollution. Take a look at them in action and see how they achieved the goal of making the forest look like you can walk further and further into those enchanted trees by varying the value of the colour we used! This was such a fun class because I took the opportunity to really focus on the elements of art when we were drawing this little tiger. There is a poster on my wall and I occasionally point them out but today... well we really delved into those elements! Our paper was painted paper so it was bumpy and lumpy (texture) and full of colour... eek another element! Then we used tints or different values to make the tiger's eyes pop, value is another element and then by bending the lines we created shapes! Phew... more elements! Of course before we got all into the art we took in a little video about Tigers so the Doodlebugs could appreciate the magnificence of what they were going to draw :) The video also prompted us to see who could do the best ROAR!!! Favourite comment of the day... "Tigers are carnivores that means they eat meat" so says the video... one of my Doodlebugs chimes in "Yes! like CHICKEN!"... video continues... "Tigers hunt buffalo, deer, wild pigs and other large mammals." Doodlebug "whaaaaaat?!?!" LOL! So anyway check out my little Doodlebugs drawing their tigers and learning all about those elements that help us to make magnificent art! |
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Be a fly on the wall in our art room! Take a look at what we do, how we do it and the smiles that I get to see week after week :) Archives
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