More Squirrels!

Our Thursday afternoon Paint Your ART Out class created their own squirrel portraits. So CUTE! 

These feature autumn, winter, and spring seasons, too.

 

 

 

Little Squirrel Portraits

Aren't these the cutest squirrels EVER? 

Our Friday afternoon Art Kids created these fluffy tailed little creatures while learning to see from another perspective - that of a small squirrel. The trees were drawn and textured with oil pastels. They are large at the bottom and tiny at the top to show size and distance compared to the little squirrel. 


The background colors were then added with liquid watercolors painted right over the oil pastel for a resist affect, and the leaves in the upper trees were lightly added with sponges and tempera paint.



Each student was then given two pieces of brown construction paper (two different shades). The squirrels' tails were drawn on one piece and filled in with oil pastel, using lots of "squirrel tail" colors and lines. 

On the other piece of brown paper, the children drew basic sketches of their squirrels in pencil by following along with me. Then they added their own outlines, details, colors, and squirrel "personalities" with oil pastels. 





The squirrels and the tails were then cut out, glued together as desired, and then glued to the bottom of the painted background.


We had a variety of squirrel photos displayed as references to help our artists select colors and observe details and textures in the fur.

 

                                 

More Polar Bears!

Our Paint Your ART Out class wanted to celebrate International Polar Bear Day, so we created these fuzzy little polar bears! 

This art was created with white chalk and soft pastel on black construction paper, which was smeared and smudged to create shadows. 

The eyes and facial features were then added with oil pastel, and the bears were cut out and glued to paper that had been previously water colored and splattered with white tempera for a snowy effect.  Aren't they adorable?

 

All About Lines!

Our Little Artists have been learning about LINES: 

straight lines, curvy lines, angled lines, squiggly lines, dashed lines, swirly lines. 

Lots and lots of lines. 





This week we painted lines, then we filled up the spaces with color. Isn't that what artists do?

We had some abstract art going on too. No lines, just color filling up spaces. We call this "free painting," and preschoolers are really good at it!

I just love these... they're like little celebrations of life!

More Ice Skaters!

We've got more Ice Skaters!

These skaters are skating on a snowy day, unlike our previously posted Olympic skaters. 

My sample

Polar Bear Art!

To celebrate International Polar Bear Day (yes, that's a thing), our home schoolers made polar bear art! 

This artwork is created with soft white pastels and charcoal on black construction paper. When completed, the bear is carefully cut out and glued to a painted watercolor/salt background, which we painted at the beginning of class (to give it time to dry and allow the salt to do its job).

 

 

Now I'm not going to say that all of these animals look like polar bears. We had quite a time examining the bearlike features of polar bears and worked hard to duplicate them in our art, but also had a good laugh as we created these creatures, which could have been many different animals along the way - a goat, a badger, a prairie dog, and so on and so forth. We may not have ended up with polar bears, but we did practice working with shading and highlighting and creating animal-like features. 

We like our little critters! 

                                             

This last one is a simplified version made by a 7-year-old member of our homeschool art club. Now THIS looks like a polar bear... and also a little like the cute little artist! 

All of the artwork shown above was created by our teenage home schoolers.

More Winter Olympics!

During the last week of the 2018 Winter Olympics, we created  tonal winterscapes with an added snow sports athlete to create these Winter Olympic commemorative mixed media paintings.



This was great practice in working with a limited palette of cool colors, mixing tints and shades to create various color tones, and painting landscapes in perspective. Just look at this student's  palette of colors: mint greens, icy blues, and lots of lovely shades of lavender! 

It was also fun to choose and color a winter "athlete" to insert into the scene. Cutting out the athlete and placing it in just the right place, and maybe adding a shadow, made it possible to create an awesome 3-dimensional image gliding along the ice or sailing through the air!

The idea for this project came from Deep Space Sparkle. We altered it somewhat to add our own Olympic athletes and stickers.