GIANT Donuts!!!

Our Little Artists made GIANT DONUTS!!!


This project brought smiles to their faces the minute they saw the HUGE cardboard donut shapes and all of the paint.




This project is what preschool art should be: open-ended, process-driven art activities that provide  for self expression, self-initiative, and a bit of safe risk-taking. 









In a relaxing, fun environment, they are exploring materials, developing fine motor skills, and being adventurous!






And all these guys thought they were doing was making giant donuts!!!

NOTES: At the BAC, we understand the benefits of open-ended art activities that preschoolers thrive upon, and we strive to provide them in our Little Artists art class. The results might not always appear to be refrigerator door-worthy, but they are! Display them proudly! Our projects are not designed to be cute, cookie cutter, teacher-dictated crafts. Preschoolers need to be able to explore their world while creating something that is uniquely their own. Moreover, the process should be a source of stress-free joy, while often, to the child, the product is secondary. Please bear this in mind when your child must be reminded to take home what he has created... it's okay!

Delicious Donuts!

Our Friday art classes made (wait for it...) DONUTS! 


We studied a few donut "models" and discussed our favorites before creating these yummy pastry masterpieces. 






We began these sweet mixed media creations by drawing the basic shapes with black Sharpies, adding icing and maybe a few other details.  





We then painted our donut creations using cake tempera colors mixed into pools of white liquid tempera, much like adding food coloring to white icing. 







It was fun to make different tints and tones of brown for glazed, cinnamon, maple, and chocolate donuts. 






After painting, the donuts were tweaked as desired with more Sharpies, paint, and/or oil pastels. 

Then the backgrounds were painted. 

These donut artists ranged in age from 6 to 9 years old. 

Our thanks to Kids Fine Lines for this sweet donut art idea!

Delectable Donuts!

We have a tradition at the Blackfoot Art Center: between Valentine's Day and the end of  February, we make pastry art in the style of Wayne Thiebaud, a contemporary painter of desserts!

This year, we created these delectable, delicious DONUTS.



First, we observed all kinds of donuts. 

Then, on a sheet of watercolor paper, we traced a lid several times and added a donut hole inside each circle. 





Using craft (acrylic) paint we then painted inside the outer and inner lines of the donut in various shades of tan and brown.





Now we added icing to each donut, using two or more tints of the icing color to paint and also highlight around the top with a shiny surface, like real frosting.   




Some artists added additional features, like rainbow  or glitter snow icing (which was spread on with a palette knife).




Finally, the donuts were completed with yummy details like tiny sprinkle cut-outs, iridescent glitter, and puff paint.

The last step was to add shadows around and beneath the donuts using charcoal pencil, soft charcoal, and a bit of rubbing.  

My sample

These donut artists ranged in age from 11 to 15 years old.

Winter Landscape

Today our Wednesday afternoon adult art class painted these lovely winter landscapes in watercolor. Would you believe the artists are beginners with no previous painting experience? 

Time: 1-1/2 hours. 

Just beautiful!

My Sample

Art from the Heart

For Valentines Day, we made Heart Art in the style of Jim Dine, a contemporary pop artist. One of Jim Dine's favorite art subjects is HEARTS and he creates them in many different ways using a huge variety of art media. 

For example, these heart artworks on the left are: 

1) an acrylic painting

2) ceramic glaze on lava 

3) a woodcut

4) an etching with aquatint (looks like markers, right?)

To create our Jim Dine-style hearts, I set up four art stations, each with a different art medium to explore while creating a heart on a 4-1/2 x 6 inch piece of poster board. They could use one or several media for each heart, but they needed to try each medium at least once while creating a total of four hearts. 

Media included tempera painting and printing, watercolor, drawing media (markers, Sharpies, pastels), and collage elements.

When all of their hearts were completed and dry, we mounted them neatly on a piece of black or white poster board.

Each heart painting tells a story in this piece.

This artist likes metallics and cool pastel colors.

These hearts vary greatly in style, color, and media!

These fun heart shapes are painted in bright, bold colors. 

This artist always uses blue with strong, bold images.

We also made Valentine cards to give to family and friends. We used lots of art media and imagination to make them. Here are a few of our creations:

Fox in the Woods

Fox in Winter Woods

This red fox is walking though the winter woods. Our Thursday afternoon art class painted him (or her) in tempera on watercolor paper.


We started with a quick sketch of the two hills in the background, the treeline, and three large trees. The we  added the fox. He could be sitting or standing.



We painted the background first, starting with the sky. Then we added the dark tree line and the big willow trees using three tints of grey for shadows and highlights. The black "eyes" in the trees were fun to paint. 

Next we painted the fox and some color and shadows in the snow.  We then added some grasses and a few footprints to complete the painting. 

The artists who created these paintings ranged  from 6 to 14 years old. 

This is our little model.