MORE CrAzY ART Camp!

On the second today of CrAzY ART Camp, we made EXPLODING Art Books!

Yup! This innocent, sweet little book is loaded with an Explosion of ART!!!

Also called Squash Books, this is an exciting project that I have done in the past with older kids - but these kiddos really want to make one - so they did!  

Exploding Art books are created in a series of steps, beginning with a large abstract painting. While it dries, the book itself is assembled, which involves binding the covers and some origami-type paper folding. Then the artwork is cut up and glued into the book.

Of course, I made one too, along with my young artists: 

To learn how we made these or to make your own, see our previous weblog posts, EXPLODING Art Books and An ART Explosion!

CrAzY ART Camp!

 This week was all about crazy art at CrAzY Art Camp!  

On the first day we made Crazy Glasses. We needed these glasses to help us see all the craziness and because they made us laugh.

If you want to make your own Crazy glasses, you can find instructions and a fun template at Picklebums.com.

Now that we were in the right "frame" of mind, 

our next crazy, loony, wacky task was to make: Croco-gators!

These are obviously not alligators nor crocodiles. 

They are something else. They are croco-gators, of course!

These critters were painted on heavy black poster board - cut in half the long way. The basic shapes were painted directly on the surface with white tempera paint, beginning with the rectangular body.

Then a long skinny triangle was added for a tail, and two long very skinny triangles for the mouth with little triangular teeth. And feet with sharp claws.

We added a few more sections within the body and some patterns too.  Then we mixed several color tints by adding the colors to puddles of white tempera paint.  (White plus a color makes a tint; such as white plus red makes pink - a tint!) We filled in the croco-gator's body with color and more patterns. 

Then, after it dried, we used a big black marker to add a few more details and a little outlining.

Day 1 of Summer CrAzY ART Camp was great fun!