Fall 2011 Week Two- Aboriginal Folk Art

Week Two Aboriginal Folk Art

While researching projects to do we came across quite a few different aboriginal projects for some reason or another. We liked them so much that we combined a couple to create an aboriginal session. I like it because of it's playfulness, and it seems easy for the kids to relate to it. We had two different projects one based on the the old hand paintings that you might see on a cave or rock wall, and the the other was about their dot paintings. We showed the kids a brief slide show to go over both projects and so they could see some true aboriginal artwork.

We started with the hand print project. The children traced their hands onto to a piece of paper, and cut it out. They temporarily taped their hand cutout onto a piece of black paper and drew with oil pastels around it. We suggested that they use repeating patterns around their hand similar to how they used to do. After they were finished drawing we they sprayed white tempera paint around they hand cutout. Finally, we removed the cutout off to show their spray painted handprint on the paper.

The dot art project we began with talking about the use of symbols and how the aboriginals use animals as symbols as well as typical Australian animals. We had the children draw with colored pencils an animal in the center of the page. Using a cotton swab the children then place rings of dots around their animal picture.

Fall 2011 Week One- Keith Haring Action Figures

Fall 2011 Session Week One

This week we used Keith Haring as our inspirational artist this week. We liked this project because it allowed the children to share their ideas with everyone else. Each student drew a Keith Haring style image and then we passed them all around for everyone to use. It was a nice way to start a class and it helped everyone get to know each other a little bit better by sharing their drawing with everyone. Keith Haring has such a great way to add action to figures to make things look like they are moving. It was a good way to show the kids a quick easy way to make drawings appear to have movement. Since we were talking about movement our second project we made paper helicopters. The children really had fun with these.

Spring Session 2011- Week Ten

Fathers' Day Goodness

I love our Dad's! Or in some cases Grandpas, uncles, brothers, and husbands. I always feel bad since Mother's Day typically falls during the school year we tend to dedicate a project to them, and poor Dad's day has fallen after school is out so the poor guy gets left in the dust. Well, not this year we are moving and shaking the schedule around so we can create some special tokens of our appreciation for our Father's. Dad's sometimes get the short end of the stick, and I want them to know that we are thinking of them, and trying to honor them this week. It wasn't easy coming up with a good project for Dad this week. I didn't want to give them a generic gift, or anything too girlie. Something useful is always good, and adding a personal touch to it should make it a hit. We decided this week to make our Father's a special card, and keychain with personalized flare on it. We started with hand painting something special on the back of a small, cool laminate sample. Then moving onto drawing with permanent markers onto shrink film. Finally, a nice card. Here are our creations:

Spring Session 2011- Week Nine

Pierced Paper Drawings & Signs of Summer Artwork

This weeks project has a funny title Pierced Paper Drawings. I came across this really amazing woman that created these and thought it could be a fun project for the kids. What we did was had the children draw a picture using pencil on white paper. White paper seemed to work best, but other colors could certainly be used, but the contrast between black and white shows up best. We encourage them to do simple line drawings without too much detail. Once they finished up with their drawings we gave them each a push pin with a pony bead hot glued on it, and a piece of cardboard. The bead is glued onto the push pin so it doesn't hit the table and dull the point. We also use a piece of cardboard so the pin has a "cushion" to go into. They just followed their drawing by poking holes along it to create their drawing. We then flipped it over and attached it to a black background. It is a really interesting way to create a drawing that is simply beautiful. The first two photos are by an artist Heather Smith Jones where the idea stemmed from.







Our second project for the day was our signs of summer. We talked about all of the signs or symbols that represent summer. We used a textured paper and had them create anywhere from 4 to 8 boxes on their paper. In each box using oil pastels drew a sign that represented summer for them. Living in California it tends to get a little bit fuzzy sometimes where summer starts and ends, but we came up with a large master list of signs/symbols. It was a fun project that turned out quite well. Oil pastels are a great medium that the kids tend to like using and have a wonderful richness to them.

Spring Session 2011- Week Eight

Swimming the Sea Watercolors and Foil Fish

Since May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month we thought we would give a nod to that culture by doing a project that dealt with the ocean, fish, and watercolors. This is a great project to do for the texture alone. It creates beautiful and to some extent random textures on your watercolor painting. Once you paint your picture and it is still wet sprinkle some salt on it and the result is magical and amazing. You just need to let it dry first and then wipe away all of the salt to reveal the beauty it has left behind. We used this technique only on the ocean/water part of the painting to imitate waves and those great white-caps that you see in water and the ocean. We then had them do the sky whatever color they wanted, and however they viewed the sky to be. Some did sunsets, some did blue skies, and some created wonderful patterns for the sky. We then had the children cut out their water/waves and glue them onto their sky. The next part of the project was to create the fish out of foil. We did a rubbing technique for create fish scales on the foil. We used old netting from fruit and candy and taped it onto some cardboard then placed a piece of foil over it. The children then rubbed with the backs of their finger nails to emboss the foil with the "scale" pattern for the fish. We used sharpies to draw over fish over the scales and it create a pretty convincing fish. In one class we had a little extra time this week, so we played some bingo in the last few minutes. A great way to pass some time and keep the kids focused.