Tropical Island Sunset

Imagine visiting a tropical island paradise, lying on the beach, listening to the gentle waves, and watching a beautiful ocean sunset. 

That's what we did... and then we painted it!

The stunning sunset colors in these paintings are not actually paint at all. 

Artists instead covered the paper with soft (sometimes called chalk) pastels, starting with purple at the top, then pink, red, orange, and ending with yellow in the center. Then they reversed the order of the colors to the bottom of the paper to create a mirror image for a beautiful ocean reflection.

The next step was to dip a finger in white tempera paint and smear it over the colors, top to bottom. Like magic, the white paint adds texture and a bit of drama while becoming the color of the pastel! They carefully blended one color with the next, wiping fingers often to avoid making 'mud.' 

While the paintings dried, our artists practiced painting a tropical island silhouette in black tempera on plain white copy paper. They wanted to learn how to depict things like a palm tree, palm leaf fronds, sea grasses, birds in flight, and distant islands.

Then they painted their tropical island scene right over their dried sunsets. So beautiful!

Our artists ranged in age from 6 to 13. We have also created these Tropical Sunsets at a previous Summer Art Camp. 

This is an expanded version of an Art for Kids: Ocean Scenes painting idea, in which black cutouts are used for the silhouettes (probably an easier option for younger children).

Sea Otter Mamas

Angel's Sea Otter

A Sea Otter’s Life

Cute little furballs – so fuzzy yet sleek.
   What do they do all day – let’s take a peek!
Life in the ocean, thick fur keeps them warm
   Good grooming’s a must, it works like a charm.
Diving for sea urchins, starfish and crabs,
   Abalone and barnacles, mollusks and squid.
On the belly, a smorgasbord layout - so good!
   Tap-tap-tap with a rock cracks open that food.
Naptime comes often, wrapped up in green kelp
   Anchored from floating away, a great help!
Rafts of sea otters with flipper-like feet,
   Rolling and playing, keeping paws dry and neat.
Mama keeps pup on her belly so warm,
   She dives and his tireless cries call her home.
This is what sea otters do every day.
   These cute little furballs of Monterey Bay.

Galilea's Sea Otter

Here's another Oceans & Seashores-themed Summer Art Camp art project! These Sea Otter Mamas and their little pups are resting in beds of kelp along the California coast. This fun mixed media project helped kids learn more about this precarious species that was once hunted almost to extinction for its magnificent pelt.  

Our young artists learned to appreciate these amazing little animals and how they have managed to reestablish themselves along the California coast (with the help of humans dedicated to their preservation, such as the Friends of the Sea Otter and the Monterey Bay Aquarium).

Mikaeyla's Sea Otter

Campers used oil pastels to draw their mama otters and to depict their cute little faces, furry bodies, front paws, and flipper-like feet. Then we cut them out, created little pups from a scrap of the same paper, and bent up the paws to hold the pup and keep it safe. 

We made a nice length of kelp for our sea otters to float in (or on), folded up their flipper feet, and added some glue dots the the back of the pups for additional 3-D cuteness! Then we glued everything to our watery background and added a few ripples and waves.

Take a look at our previous post, Adorable Sea Otters, to see how older children created their Mama Sea Otters.

Narwhals and Tidepools

We just finished our Oceans & Seashores Art Camp and had so much fun!!! 

First, we learned all about Narwhals, the Unicorns of the Sea, and then we painted them!

Did you know? A Narwhal's horn is actually a tooth. Mostly males have one and just a few Narwhals have two of them and some have none at all. 

Scientists don't know what the horns are for. 

Our Narwhals were drawn with pencil and outlined with Sharpies. Then they were colored in with oil pastel, allowing some of the white paper to remain white. 

The next step was to paint over the Narwhal with watercolor - one chosen color only, and watch the oil pastel colors pop through! This is called watercolor resist.

After the paint was dry, we added blue (or turquoise blue) watercolor to the background. We sprayed it lightly with water to keep it wet and sprinkled some course salt over it to create a watery home for our little Narwhals!

We have painted Unicorns of the Sea before. Take a look at our previous post right here.

We also made our own tidepools! 

This time we drew our sea life with wax crayons. We also use shimmering crayons to draw sparkles on the water. 

 And again, we watched the colors resist the blue watercolor paint that we painted over it. 

After the paint was dry, we added a few additional details to our sea life, then we cut an interesting shape around the pool. Finally, we filled it up with a sandy beach! 

That part was easy. We just painted the white area around the pool with white glue (mixed with a little water) and sprinkled sand over it. Then we glued on a few tiny sea shells to complete our little tide pools. 

Thanks to Buggy and Buddy for  this awesome art project idea!

Custom Cowboy Boots!

Today our talented young western footwear designers created these magnificent cowboy boot designs. 

The fancy stitching along the side of the boot looks pretty impressive, don't you think? 

This is a mixed media project that involves a number of different processes.

The first challenge was (have you guessed?) writing the artist's name in cursive to use for that fancy stitching. We practiced first to get the right size and length to fit the boot.  Those who are not yet versed in cursive writing did their best with some fancy printing. 

Next we sketched our boots on white 12" x 18" sulfite paper - heavy drawing paper - using a template (I have three different ones). 

We folded the boot along a central line and wrote the name along the line using a charcoal pencil, then folded it over, and rubbed (hard) to create a mirror image. 

We added a fancy design to one side and made a mirror image in the same way. 

We also added other boot sections,  stitching, and a fancy toe design to match the boot design.

We drew a boot pull for the top and a spur with a star in the margins of the paper. 

Everything was then outlined with a black Sharpie, carefully painted in with watercolor, and put out in the sun to dry while we played a little cornhole! 

Then we carefully cut out the dried boots, glued on the boot pulls and spurs, and attached the star with a brad so it can spin! A little metallic Sharpie, glitter pen, and a few gemstones, and it was done!

This art project was the last of our June Westward Ho! theme for this summer's art camps and classes. I think our little buckaroos had a rip-roarin,' blastin' good time! Take a gander at our original Cowboy Boot design post for more exciting cowboy boot art.

Cactus Gardens in Watercolor

 

As we continue to 'explore' the Old West, we realize that much of our time is spent in the Southwest desert! 

So... we made these lovely Cactus Gardens using Native American patterns to decorate our planter pots. 

First we observed and practiced drawing various cactus shapes.

On an 11" x 15" sheet of watercolor paper, we drew the pot first, then added the soil line and the smaller cactus in the front. Then we drew the larger cactus behind the first to create layers (front and back), and we added patterns to the pot. The next step was to outline everything with a black Sharpie.  

Now it was time to add color! We first used liquid watercolor to fill in the background. We dried it before painting our cactus and pot to prevent the paint from bleeding. 

We painted the cactus by first mixing a variety of greens, starting with the Kelly green in the pan and adding orange (to grey it up) or yellow or blue and varying amounts of water for transparency. 

We also painted any colorful flowers and the soil. 

Finally, we painted in our pot patterns. After they dried, we added additional details in ink. 

I think they're stunning!

For more, take a look at our original Cactus Gardens post.

Rainbow Trout in Watercolor

Here's a great Father's Day gift idea - especially if Dad enjoys fishing - this colorful Rainbow Trout!

These beauties are first sketched in pencil, then outlined with fine and ultra fine black Sharpies. 

They are then painted with watercolor.

The background can be painted (add salt for a nice watery texture) or the trout can be cut out and mounted!

Take a look at our previous post for more detailed instructions for creating this beautiful rainbow trout.  

Painted Indian Ponies!

This week we painted these Indian Ponies!

This is one of our favorite Old Western-themed art projects, as you can see below.

We first observed some Indian pony artwork. Then we used a special template to draw the right shape and size of the pony's head on our 12" x 16" watercolor paper: a large size rubber flipflop!

Then, using tempera paint, we painted the background and the horse. Finally, we added war paint and feathers (as an option).

This artwork was created by artists ages 7 through 13. You can see an earlier Indian Ponies post right here.

Old West Native American Trioramas

This week at Summer Art Camp our young artists built these impressive Native American trioramas. 

Campers got a peek at how North American Indians lived through 3-dimensional construction and assemblage of a native village. 

Our miniature scenes were created within a 3-sided display called a triorama. Ours were made from a piece of poster board cut to 14" x 18".  A slightly smaller triorama can be made from an ordinary piece of 12" x 18" construction or sulfite paper.

The triorama template we used calls for a square sheet of paper, but you can leave the excess (don't cut it off) to add a lake or an extension of land in the foreground, as some of our artists chose to do. Before assembling the triorama, we painted it, dried it, and glued it together.

We made our miniature objects with Kraft paper, cardboard, tissue and nature objects such as pebbles, twigs, and leather.

We made teepees, fire rings, canoes with oars, and wooden frames on which to stretch a buffalo skin or create a colorful weaving. 

We also learned about Native American symbols and inscribed some of them onto our miniature objects.

This project was a lot of fun! Young artists enjoyed working in a 3-D format with so many different materials.

Trioramas are a great way for kids to study and illustrate any subject, such as natural habitats, animal science, or to simply tell stories. They can be used to create a 3-dimenstional indoor or outdoor scene, and they can be attached back to back for a four different story scenes or learning sections in one. 

Notorious Outlaws!

This was the first of our 'Westward Ho!' themed Summer Art Camp projects.  

Our wild rootin-tootin artists learned how to create soft pastel self-portraits while immersing themselves into the Old West era to create a humorous storyline/narrative along the way: what kind of an lawless, cantankerous scoundrel am I? 

The little buckaroos then designed their own WANTED posters with creative hand lettering and descriptive writing skills to construct a humorous, compelling, readable poster.

We started by choosing a good wild-west cowboy/girl name. Most of us (including me) had great Old West names to start with, so that was easy. We simply elaborated on them to get just the right name, using a few online ideas for the best cowboy names and cowgirl names. 

Then we decided on what type of notorious outlaws we were: your typical stagecoach robbers or cattle rustlers, or maybe something a bit sillier, like stagecoach stowaways or cat rustlers!

We created the written portions of our posters on the backside of very old, yellowed manila graph paper (yes, I have some, for some reason) (which, goes to show why art teachers never throw anything away). We left a large section in the center for the portraits, which we created on a separate sheet of manila paper in soft pastels and charcoal pencil. 

My Sample

I encouraged our lawless ones to use sepia tones and avoid very bright colors to keep that 'worn,' old-time look. We sprayed the portraits with hairspray to prevent smearing, and glued them to the posters. Then we attached the posters to a 12" x 18" sheet of brown sulfite paper on which a few boards had been previously "nailed," and we drew tacks in the corners of the posters with a Sharpie. 

The original idea for this project comes from Deep Space Sparkle’s Gunslingers & Outlaws lesson for 4^th thru 6^th grade.