Winter Banners!

We made these sparkly winter banners at this 
week's Winter ART Workshop!

Our young artists had a such great time creating them too. We painted, printed, smeared, stamped, folded, cut, punched, glued, and threaded. The kids really had fund trying all of these different processes and techniques!

Here's how we made our winter banners:

We used one sheet of black poster board (22" x 28") for every two banners; each 11" x 28."

1) Each artist used an ink brayer to spread blue tempera paint over the poster board. Then we added a bit of white to the blue for additional tints and rolled on even more paint. We were careful to leave some of the black background showing.

2) Artists used bubble wrap, corrugated cardboard, sponges, and old marker lids to print abstract patterns and shapes over the background using cool colors/tints and white.

3) While our backgrounds dried, we cut out evergreen tree shapes from construction paper. Then we also learned how to fold and cut a 6-sided snowflake and we make at least three of them. We also cut a really fancy one out of a doily!

4) Now it was time to arrange our cutouts on the banner and glue them down. We also punched out lots of tiny snowflakes and added them to our banners.

5) We finished the banner by using gold paint for printing golden snowflakes (from rubber stamps) and for additional sponge work.

6) Next, we punched holes along the bottom and added a fringe.

7) The last step was to select a nice birch branch to attach to the top of the banner and twine or yarn to hang it with.

We would like to thank Green Bay Art Room for this great wintery mixed media project idea!

More Christmas Cars!

More Christmas Cars!

We created this Christmas Car project two years ago, and it was so much fun I thought my new students would enjoy it as well! 

This project is a good introduction to illustration art. It is not intended to be realistic, but at the same time it involves using symmetry to draw a car as well as a number of different artistic techniques. 

We started by folding our paper in half and drawing 1/2 of our car with black oil pastel. Then we folded it back in half and rolled over it with a brayer. 




When we unfolded it we could see the faint outline of our car on the white side of the paper! 

We went over the lines with our oil pastel to complete our car. Then  we drew in Christmasy details such as a wreath or bow over the grill, a Christmas tree, and stacks of gifts! 



Next we painted our cars and everything else with cake tempera paint, and we added silver tempera paint to the chrome bumper and grill.     

We filled in the background with tinted color (by adding white to our paint) and we splattered the painting to create snow. 

This painting was fun, but our artists really had fun splattering their artwork!
    

Created by a 5-year-old, this Christmas car has a Rudolf nose on the grill!!!

You can find detailed instructions for this project at
Deep Space Sparkle.

Santa Folk Art

This week we celebrated Santa through the ages and as he appears in other countries.

Also known as St. Nick, Kris Kringle, and Father Christmas, he brought toys and goodies to children on Christmas Eve just like our present day Santa. 

However, early images of Santa looked quite different than the Santa we know today. He wore long coats of various colors and ornamentation. 



He often carried Christmas trees and variety of items such as food, toys in baskets, large pockets, belts, and shoulder bags. 

The children were very interested in these nostalgic images of Santa Claus and wanted to create their own. 

This art project is an extension of Patty's lesson from Deep Space Sparkle, which helped us to create our own sweet Santas wearing beautifully embroidered coats.  We used 12" x 18 "blue sulphite paper for this project.



After drawing our Santa with black oil pastel, we painted his face using flesh tone craft paint. The rest of the painting is completed in tempera paint, starting with the white beard and fur. 





Next, we added Santa's coat, remembering to double-load our chosen color with a bit of white. We refrained from washing our brushes in water; instead we wiped them on our painting mats and kept right on painting! This kept us from watering down our paint.

 





We then painted the background with broad strokes of icy colors, again by double and triple loading our brushes with cool colors and white.


We painted in the boots and mittens, and we allowed everything to dry. 

The next step was to draw various patterns and designs on the coat with construction paper crayons. 

Lastly, we re-outlined our Santas with black oil pastel and added the eyes, nose and mouth.

I love these lovely Scandinavian-style patterns and designs!

Our artists ranged in age from 5 to 12 years.

A Pastel Poinsettia

Wouldn't these lovely poinsettias make great Christmas cards?


These are soft pastel paintings completed on red construction paper.




We examined a few faux poinsettias before starting our artwork, and we used a resource photo to refer to as we worked.

We drew our poinsettia using the tutorial found at Masterpiece Art Instruction. 









Then we used blending stumps and fingertips to soften our pastels and black charcoal pencils to further define details and lay in the shadows.

I think they are beautiful!

 Our poinsettia artists ranged in age from 9 to adult. 

Handmade Ornaments

Our children's classes had a blast making their own Christmas ornaments this week! (They also made a huge mess, but assured me it was worth it.) 


Some of our crafters produced this little herd of woodland deer, complete with twiggy legs and antlers and fuzzy white tails.





We also made these colorful scratch board frame ornaments. Some artists planned to find a picture to frame at home, but these are also pretty just as they are.

Here is one completed ornament collection.

We also made mini-Christmas trees. 

Best of all, we had a great time!