Blog Archives - Arty Pants Studio TT

Doodlebug Monsters... BOO!

28/10/2015

Well, it's Halloween and while I don't personally celebrate the occasion I find it hard to ignore the many enticing projects that crop up just by adding a little boo-factor :)

So this afternoon the little ones got busy drawing some not-so-scary monsters... I gave them a few options for the main parts, body, arms, legs and eyes. The rest I left up to their own creative genius and this is what happened.

Picasso Witches

27/10/2015

So it's the week of Halloween and I thought it would be great to get the Picassos doing something a little witchy.. lol. But instead of just painting a boring old witch we turned it into a lesson in Picasso... Pablo Picasso that is!

So I gave them a little intro to the work of Picasso, they'll definitely have to revisit their namesake, but this short intro video is enough to get them started on our Picasso inspired witches!

We also looked at these 10 famous Picasso paintings just because this type of art is so unfamiliar... I wanted them to get a feel for what it could look like so when they started to paint their witches they wouldn't feel the need to try to 'correct' their art to make it conform!

They drew half the face in profile and the other half looking straight ahead and we worked on black paper today. Take a look at the results :)

My Thursday afternoon Picassos were a little reluctant to get into this weird faced witch.. lol.. but after they learnt a little more about their namesake and understood that Picasso didn't paint the way he did because he wasn't good at classical painting but rather he was such a master that he dared to revolutionize the way art was interpreted and presented they gave in and decided to try their hand at the Picasso-inspired witch :)

The Tortoise and The Hare

21/10/2015

Another cute lesson in collage that happens to be wrapped in a classic Aesop Fable. So of course we looked at a little video of The Tortoise and The Hare... this caused a lot of giggles and then we got right down to work!

The little ones used templates to make both the tortoise and the hare and drew in the simple background using oil pastels. The whole picture was put together at the end... which took up a bit of time because of the many parts of the hare, but I think it was worth it :)

Picassos Illustrate the Tortoise and the Hare

20/10/2015

I came across this video with my kids and alas an art lesson was born! Aesop Fables are fun-filled but packed with great life lessons and the added bonus is I got the Picassos thinking about what it would be like to be a book illustrator. So we looked at this video and although they were all familiar with the story it didn't take away from the joyous giggles that erupted because let's face it... this is just cute. The moral wasn't lost either... I got responses from "miss, it means you should be serious and not slack off!" to "miss, slow and steady wins every time!"

Then the Picassos got down to the serious business of creating a scene to represent the story like a real illustrator would.

My Thursday Picassos took this exercise and amped it up a level... they heard book illustrator and I mentioned that the drawing was in a cartoon style because it is a children's story and they immediately asked if they could add thought bubbles to their art... of course! Why not!

Watercolour Owls

14/10/2015

Owls are really endearing creatures in the art room... they are easily recognizable and simple enough for small hands to recreate but they offer just the right amount of challenge as well.
But of course before we got down to the business of drawing and painting the owls... we got to know a bit more about these nocturnal creatures.

Then, I demonstrated a simple method to draw an owl using recognizable letters and shapes and the Doodlebugs got busy drawing in oil pastels. They then painted them using liquid watercolours!

Check out these creations and you'll see what I mean!

Warm and Cool Colours

13/10/2015

Warm colours like the sun, cool colours like the sea! Today my Picassos took a look at yet another way that colours can be classified or grouped. We took our minds back to our funky chameleon when we grouped them into primary and secondary colours and today we learned that they can also be divided into warm and cool colours. We looked at this video and then discussed examples of warm and cool colours.

Then I illustrated how we were going to use a drawing of the sun and the moon to highlight warm and cool colours.

Check out the results below!

Thursday Picassos take their turn at our sun and moon art piece ;)

Doodlebug Daisies

7/10/2015

We just can't get enough of collage and it shows! They painted fluffy white clouds on a blue background and used pre-cut brown construction paper to paint lots of small daisies to look like a field of wild flowers. The painting technique this time though was simply using Q-Tips to make small dots to make the flowers. Then we stuck the brown paper onto the blue and voila... another beautiful masterpiece.

Some kiddies got extra creative and made animal shapes in their clouds, some wrote their names up in cloud format in the sky :) Some went wild and squeezed as many daisies as they could, others took a much more controlled approach but they all came out beautifully!

Symmetrical Butterflies

6/10/2015

Symmetry is all around us... but one of the most beautiful examples of symmetry that occurs naturally in nature is you guessed it... the BUTTERFLY!

But it's not enough to give my kiddies this one example... in true Arty Pants (Art + Smarty Pants) style we took a look at the educational video below that quickly gives the basics of symmetry and puts our art class for the day into perspective!

To emphasize the symmetry in this beautiful creature we folded our pages in half, opened them again and drew half a butterfly in black oil pastel. I told them to press really hard cause we were going to need it to print on the other side of the page!

So the next step of course was to fold the paper back in half and rub so the image was pressed onto the opposite side of the page. Then they traced the print over to complete the picture and then painted them using pan watercolours. For the final flourish we painted the background in liquid watercolours and sprinkled some salt while it was still wet to get a mottled effect. (A bit of science in art... the salt sucks up the water in the watercolour leaving it looking speckled!)

Simply beautiful :)