Fall 2010 Week Two Wayne Thiebaud and Flipbooks

This week we took a look at the artist Wayne Thiebaud. He is a contemporary artist that had a love for food. Though he did traditional landscapes and portraiture he was fascinated with food particularly sweet treats. My kind of artist! He worked in pastels and oil paints mostly. Using his interest in painting and sweet treats we had the children draw their own ice cream cone. We had the children use oil pastels for this project due to its inherent nature of texture and blending capabilities. Oil pastels are a cross between oil paints, and crayons, though they blend so much better. I personally really enjoy using oil pastels because they draw like butter. You also don't have to press as hard to get beautiful intense color. When you blend and draw over other colors they mesh and move around on the page to create more natural color, shadows, and/or highlights. I think the ice cream treats the kids drew look amazing. Since, many weren't use to coloring over color it took a little coaxing to get them to understand how oil pastels can work that way. I love the way they turned out.

Our second project for the day were flipbooks. Growing up I remember being amazed by this concept that is the basis for movies and animation today. Flipping through these books and watching the pictures move and do funny things. We tried to break it down by using rubber stamps, and having one stationary object and one object that moves on each page. A simple enough concept, but challenging to do. The kids had a fun time stamping, and some stamps even moved way off the the page onto shirts and hands. The most difficult part was keeping the stationary object stationary on each page. The moving object was a much easier task for the children. Even though the stationary object may not have been perfect the small movements page to page make it interesting. I have to apologize to parents for any books that may have came apart at home. I had to replace new staples in the stapler we used and I think that they were an inferior staple. Who would have thought staples came in good, better, and best grades. If the book loses some pages you can re-attach the book back together with a home stapler if needed.

Fall Session Begins!!!

We are very excited that our fall after school session has begun. We have many fun projects lined up for this session. I guess I am a bit biased since I tend to think all of the projects are fun, but we wouldn't choose projects that I didn't think the kids would get a kick out of. Not to mention projects that can be fun and the children can learn something in the process. Tuesday, our first day of class, and I am happy to say our cup floweth over. As much as I didn't like doing it we had to turn some sweet children away because we are running at full capacity (this isn't a complaint). On our first day of class we made three simple whistle type instruments. First up was the paper whistle, which my friend brought to the table, and I never made them as a youngster. Super simple to make but not as easy to get the noise out of. We also made a straw whistle that sounds more like a kazoo. I get a kick out of this one because the first time I got it to work it tickled my lips and I almost jumped out of my seat. A feeling I wasn't expecting. Lastly, were our harmonica/kazoo which we have dubbed the harmonizoo. Shaped like a harmonica but sounding like a kazoo. Oh the sounds that were coming out of our classroom. It was fantastic.

This session we are also bringing more traditional art into the class. So first up basic drawing skills. Today we started off with reading the book "Harold and the Purple Crayon" to get things going. Then proceeded to talk about basic shapes and lines. All of the children practiced drawing basic shapes and lines. We then brought out a chair and had the class point out basic shapes and lines that made up the chair while I drew it on the board. The idea is to show the children that everything around us is made up of shapes and lines, and if we break it down to those simple shapes it can make it easier to draw. Sometimes things can be very daunting at first to think about drawing it, but focusing and pulling out what shapes make up an object can make it simpler and more accessible to draw. After that exercise the children were asked to draw something crazy from their imagination using simple shapes and lines. They certainly didn't disappoint. We had everything from bad monster pets, a thousand face house, springing eyes to buggy-snail clocks. We are looking forward to the rest of the classes and getting to know and appreciate all of the new and old faces that our joining us.