Tide Pools & Fish Schools

What is a Tide Pool?  It's sort of like a sea puddle that's left behind when the tide recedes from high to low tide; and this little pool might have all sorts of sea life living in it! 



We made these tide pools using crayons and thinned blue watercolor for a resist effect. Then we brushed white glue around the outside of our pools and sprinkled it with sand. After it dried we shook off the excess sand and hot glued on a few little sea shells.

We also made watercolor batik paintings of beautiful fish!


We used a variety of fish templates for this project because in a school of fish, all of the fish would look alike. The artists also chose a fish to be an "oddball" or an outsider to hide within the school of fish, and they drew it first. 


They added the rest of the fish by tracing another fish template over and over again. The trick here was to determine how to overlap the fish. Some are in front of, and some are behind the other fish. 



Next, we painted over all of our pencil lines with masking fluid. This keeps the paint off of the paper, even if you paint right on top of it. It also helps keep colors separated from one another and it makes great bubbles!

We painted our fish and the watery background. Then, after the paint was dry, we rubbed off the masking fluid, and erased any remaining pencil lines. Beautiful!

This art still has pencil lines to be erased. It pays to draw lightly!

Take a Walk on the Beach

Continuing with our seashores and oceans theme, we created Beach Art!

This one, entitled "A Walk on the Beach," was rendered with oil pastel on blue construction paper. 

We used this photo as a visual resource for this artwork.

I can almost hear the crashing waves! Can you?

Sea Wanderers

Wanderers of the Sea

Graceful and so elegant

These Wanderers of the Sea

So calm, these gentle giants

As they sing their songs to me.

They wander through the oceans

Though mammals they may be.

They live and sleep among the fish

These Wanderers of the Sea.

We created our own Sea Wanderers with tempera paint on heavy paper, 22" x 22." 

We added collage graphics and details once the paint was dry. 







This was a great lesson in mixing and using monochromatic shades and tints to create values to depict depth and volume. 

We started with dark to light blues in the whale, then used a mixed shade of blue, green, or turquoise to create the sea, again using mixed tints and shades.

It was okay to work from dark to light, then start from dark to light again, like layers of ocean waves in the distance.









Next, the sky was painted. Then other sea creatures and details were drawn, cut out, and glued into the ocean scene. 












Our whales also spouted a plume of water from their blowholes, to which some artists added shimmering glitter paint!







Each artist was also given a copy of the poem, Wanderers of the Sea, shown at the top of this page. Some chose to attach it as an element of their artwork. I love to help young artists make connections between the visual and language arts, especially poetry.

               

Our thanks to Studio "Change" in Omsk for this amazing art project idea!

Sea Creatures!

Our Budding Artists made SEA CREATURES! Actually, they made entire FAMILIES of sea creatures! 

We made seahorses and we made octopuses. Our projects involved lots of fun crafty materials and processes that help young artists build skills while being creative and making something they can take home and play with!

First we read Eric Carle's Mr. Seahorse and learned that daddy seahorses take very good care of their children.





Then we made our own seahorses. We painted folded paper plates with watery white glue and stuck on colorful tissue to make the seahorse body. We added heads and tails and fins with a stapler and we glued on an eye. 

Then our artists made child seahorses with folded cupcake papers and markers (this was their own original idea).

Next we made octopuses using strips of construction paper. It was fun adding the tentacles with paint dotting tools (bingo daubers). We also learned to curl the octopus legs (arms?) around a pencil or marker. 







How do you make a girl octopus? 

Long eyelashes and a bow. Of course.

Sand Castles

How can you build SAND CASTLES when you are not at the BEACH?

Easy! These little artists built these fabulous sand castles right here in the art studio, and yours can too.

All you need is sandpaper! 

You'll also need a large piece of white drawing paper, tempera paint (blue, green, and white), scraps of construction paper, a few tiny seashells, glue stick, white glue, and scissors. 

We also used crayons, a butterfly punch, and scraps of patterned paper for a few added details.



It also helps to have a photo or two of sandcastles to look at. 


Start by painting the ocean using any combination of green, white, and blue. This artist mixed all three together to create a lovely turquoise sea. They can leave the bottom of the paper unpainted because it will be covered with a sandpaper beach. 

Next, have them tear one or two wide strips of sandpaper and glue it to the bottom of the painting. 

While the paint dries, cut a few basic shapes out of sandpaper and show them how to lay it out to form towers and other structures you might find in a sand castle. These artists loved cutting sandpaper - and tearing it too! 



They arranged their pieces on the beach until they were satisfied, then they glued them down.

Now it's time for the details! One thing we found is that it's really fun to draw on sandpaper with crayons! 

Out artists added windows and doors. Then they added beach balls, butterflies, sand buckets, and sea creatures. We also glued on tiny seashells with hot glue, but white glue works too.


This artist added an entire family to her beach, but then had second thoughts. She finally decided the beach was too crowded, so she removed the children and left the parents resting on the beach while the children went swimming!

Artistic license allows you do these things, you know.

Magical Mechanical Flying Sculptures!

This week we made 

Magical Mechanical 

Flying Sculptures!

I KNOW! Amazing, right? These young artists can make ANYTHING!!!!

How did they do it?









They started with an ordinary BOX, which they painted white (we used gesso.) 

Then they painted the box using any colors they wanted. They mixed most of their own colors.






While the paint dried, the artists created a magical CROWN from a cardboard tube. We added plenty of magic with glittery paint and gems and beads and other magical ingredients for this task.  







Then we added details to our machine such as buttons and knobs and gauges and switches and gears and portholes and warning notices and who-knows-what else. 

We also added wheels, soft landing pads, or 'boingy' things to the bottom of the machine. 






Some artists used a photo of themselves operating the machine. You could see them driving the machine through a little window.







To make the wings, we used wooden tools to engrave or "tool" the shapes into heavy gauge tooling foil with soft felt underneath. We created organic shapes, like insect or bird wings (not airplane or jet wings). Then they tooled feathers and other types of patterns and textures into each wing, and cut the wings out.

The wings were then attached with a brad through a drilled hole in each side of the box and a hole punched into the wing. 







The wings can now be swiveled and bent at will for perfect flying!

Here is my amazing flying sculpture. (Of course I made one too!)

A BIG thank you to Small Hands Big Art for this amazing project idea!

Robot Puppets!

"Contraptions and Gizmos" Week (and Gadgets and Doohickeys and so forth) started, of course, with ROBOT PUPPETS!!! This was a S.T.E.A.M. MakerSpace Camp, so there was a lot of innovation and creative thinking-out-of-the-box going on around here. 

These fun robot puppets have movable arms and legs and BIG personalities (robot-alities?)

They were made with anything found in the MakerSpace studio - along with older stored artwork, which just waiting to be incorporated in to one of these awesome robots!



Let me explain. Sometimes, when we make painted collage projects, we often paint a LOT of paper to cut and glue to our collages. Much of it is stamped with various shapes for added texture and color, and MUCH of it is left over and stacked in a box for future projects. Like Robot Puppets! BOOM!





We started our robots by tracing the square body on the back of a favorite painted paper using a 5" x 5" cardboard template. The artists cut them out, then created a head, and rectangular arms and legs proportional to the body. (I do this to ensure that they draw and design things BIG, instead of microscopically small, as they often do.) We glued the head to the top of the body, then we added fun foam shapes, bottle caps, stickers, washi tape, sparkly pompoms, pipe cleaners, and what-have-you for features and details. 


After everything was glued on, we punched holes in the body and the tops of the arms and legs and attached them with brads (kids LOVE brads!) Last step: We taped a stick to the back of the body and BOOM! 


An AWESOME puppet!




Our thanks to Meri Cherry for this great art project idea! 

We also made more ROBOTIC HANDS this week. You can see them right HERE.

Paint Like Piet Mondriaan

Mondriaan Mural Abstract

PIET MONDRIAAN

"Curves are so emotional!"  

Piet Mondriaan was a Dutch artist, known for his cubist abstract paintings. He used grid-like shapes with black, white, and bold colors. He is said to have never used a ruler to paint lines and he mixed all of his own colors, which were always variations of the primaries red, blue, and yellow.  

Mondriaan's art is very popular in the Netherlands, especially in his hometown of Amersfoort. His abstract art designs can be seen on objects everywhere; from fashions, furniture, and bags, to clock faces, buildings, and even soda cans!

There are many ways to create Mondriaan-style art. We decided on a collage. 

First, I selected as many different shades of red, blue, and yellow paper that I could find, which we cut into various square and rectangular shapes, large and small. I also cut lots of long black strips with the paper cutter. 

We selected and glued red, blue, and yellow shapes to a large piece of white paper, ensuring that the edges were always vertical and horizontal (no diagonal placements) so that we could be true to Mondriaan's style of painting. 

Then we glued on the black stripes, some of which were wider and some narrower.  Some had to be cut to fit into smaller spaces. It was like putting together a puzzle, and it was fun!