Spring Session 2011 Week Two

Learning about ATC cards & Felt character pins

Nowadays we have all sorts of "baseball cards". When I was young I remember collecting Charlie's Angels cards, Star Wars cards, and Wacky Packages stickers. The great thing that artists now are creating are ATC cards (Artist Trading Cards). These cards are created by using typically mixed media. This week we talked to the children about what mixed media are, and how they are incorporated into ATC cards. ATC cards were basically created by an artist from Switzerland named Stirneman. In 1996 he wanted to create a catalogue for work he was doing with some other artists. Due to the high cost of printing what he called hockey cards, he decided to create them himself to a tune of 1,200. After he made all of them in 1997 he put them on exhibit, and when it was open to the public he encouraged those who came to create their own. So, ATC cards are the same dimension as baseball cards so you can fit them into typical baseball card sleeves for protection. ATC cards also are only traded or exchanged not sold. Though nowadays people do sell them though they are considered ACEO (Art cards, editions, and originals) cards.





















With the remainder of our time we had the kids make felt character pins. We created a few templates for the kids, but encouraged them also to create their own if they wanted to. These we super fun to make and putting googly eyes on them made them extra cute/funny.

Winter Session Week Nine

Saint Patrick's Day- Mosaic Shamrocks and Rainbow/Shamrock Cuffs

There was a old woman who lived in a shoe.
She thought it'd be nice to paint it blue.
A giant by mistake,
the shoe did he take.
Now the old woman is going boohoo. Written by Kathie Stokes

Yes, who knew I could write such eloquent limericks. The day is upon us to celebrate the color green, little mysterious people, gold coins, rainbows, shamrocks, pinching others, and for those who are old enough green beer? If you haven't guessed already, and I am assuming you have since I have some smart cookies who read this, yes in fact, St. Patrick's Day arrived. So, for the glorious occasion we made collage, mosaic shamrocks, and rainbow shamrock cuffs. We also talked about limericks, and the kids wrote a few themselves. We kicked it off with the story of how St. Patrick's Day came to be.

Starting with the collage-mosaic shamrocks we had the children use some cardstock, and trace a large shamrock onto the paper. Then using yellow and green tissue paper they painted matte medium onto the paper and laid down the tissue paper, and then painted over it to seal it. The matte medium dries clear and gives the appearance of stained glass in a way. After it dried they then cut out the shamrock and we punched a hole on top and strung a ribbon through so they could hang it in a window.










Here's a shot of our powerful rainbow/shamrock cuffs. When you want to become one with the leprechauns you wear these, and it helps you find those elusive gold coins, yippee! We prepared the ribbon beforehand. The kids used a template to trace and cut out their felt shamrock, and thread it onto their new fangled cuff!

Tic Tac Toe & Gestural Drawing

Road trips with children can be quite an adventure, and for whatever reason, maybe I like the torture of it all, we don't have a dvd player for our sweet little ones to enjoy along the way. If you are in the same boat as me I scramble for things for my girls to do along the way. When we came across this project I thought it would be such a great thing for my girls to do while sitting in the car for hours. Maybe just maybe it will stave off them asking, "how much longer until we're there" just a few minutes longer than they normally would. A traveling tic tac toe game! We make it all out of felt which is nice since felt tends to stick well to itself, making it harder to lose pieces. We precut the board and strips. The children each picked out their board color and glued the strips onto the board. We had templates for different icons for them to use as playing pieces. There were many to choose from x's, o's, squares, triangles, hearts, and stars. They picked their two playing pieces and traced them onto the two other colors of felt. This was a good challenge for children as they haven't quite learned how to efficiently use materials yet. We sort of forced the issue giving them smaller pieces and showing them ways to shift and move the pieces around to fit more than one shape onto the piece of felt. They then cut out all of their playing pieces. We then had them pick out a ribbon to tie up their game so they could take it with them wherever they go.

Today we discussed gestural drawing which is one of the easier drawing techniques, but harder for young children to understand. It is a good way to loosen up when getting ready to draw. Gestural drawing is essentially quick drawings that capture a moment, movement, or object. Gestural drawings don't focus on the detail but the shape and movement of the object. They tend to be a bit messier, but sometimes you just have to get "the idea" of what you are drawing. It is a good way to warm up when drawing, and if a form of sketching. I find most children try to focus on details, and really draw which is good, but they also can get very frustrated when it doesn't turn out like they thought. I find gestural drawing a good way to focus more on the big picture and then go back to the finer details once they have had a chance to draw the object quickly a few times. So our gestural drawing lesson was the children looking at a still life of small pumpkins and dried corn. I time them in short increments of 30 seconds to 60 seconds. It is a lot of fun, and the kids seem to enjoy it. It definitely relives them the pressure of having to make something look really good. Plus, they can become better artists practicing like this before they begin really drawing.

Autumn Trees and Bird Ornaments

Hot enough today? I think it was more like a sweltering, sweaty, mess. Much thanks to the custodian that came in to save the day and turned on the air-conditioner for our class!! I think that was much like the day trying to re-focus, since the heat keep most of us in a haze. Okay now re-focus on what the projects were for today. Fall has finally arrived officially, even though it seems as though summer has just started, we worked on a autumn tree watercolor project. The children using yellow, orange, and red tempera paints created a textured background. The idea was to sponge paint the background in autumn leaf colors. We encouraged the kids to let all colors show and use a little blending. Some enjoyed blending so much the background turned into a solid color, nonetheless, a beautiful autumn color. After the background dried we used a straw and black tempera paint to create the trunk and branches of the tree by blowing the paint onto the paper. The results turned out really interesting. Some kids ended up with large, thick trunks and tons of branches, and others with smaller trunks and few branches. The black tempera did need a little help, and some kids were more timid with blowing the paint around, but eventually they got it.

We also worked on a small sewing project, of a felt bird ornament. Using felt, a couple beads, and ribbon the kids were able to turn simple shapes into a super cute ornament. It was a good exercise in coordination having to thread ribbon and beads, and tying knots.