Part 2: Each artist selected two or three colors of tempera paint, plus white. They then mixed a few tints and hues of their own and added paint to collage. Each artist had his or her own style, and it was so much fun to watch! Paint was dabbed, blotted, swished, splattered, swirled, and splotched! The artwork itself was often used as a mixing palette, with delightful results; don't you agree?
This guided painting event is scheduled for Saturday, November 14 at 1:00 to 3:30 pm. You will want to frame and display this lovely painting!
To do this project, you will need watercolor paper - 90 lb or 140 lb, a pencil, a set of watercolors, a medium round brush, soft tissues, black tempera paint, masking tape, a watercolor or drawing board, and a set of oil pastels.
First, using your pencil, draw the spookiest haunted house you can think of. Start by drawing a small hill, and put the house on the hill. Add things like gables, banisters, towers, layered rooftops and lots of windows! You can also add a jack 'o lantern on the porch, gravestones, a dead tree, or a broken fence. Now, fill in the windows with a bright eerie yellow in oil pastel. Use this yellow or a lighter yellow or white to draw to fill in a large moon in the sky as well. Now, go over all of your pencil lines with black oil pastel, pressing firmly. You can fill in smaller, narrower shapes completely with the oil pastel. (Also draw in the window pane lines right over the yellow oil pastel.) You are creating a silhouette, so the blacker the better. Now, fill in the entire house shape with black tempera, leaving the windows unpainted, of course.
To create these amazing owls, you will need a set of oil pastels (24 or 36 is best), black construction paper (9 x 12), a pencil, a small easel, and a good color photo of an owl. We have files of resource pictures at the art center, including one of just owls. Most of our resource photos are collected from old calendars or nature magazines. Optional materials are masking tape, tracing paper and carbon paper.
Now the student will create a palette for his or her owl art. One by one, select the oil pastels that might match the colors in your owl and hold them up to the photo. If you see that color anywhere in the photo, set it aside. This pastel stick becomes part of your palette. Continue until you have your complete palette, making sure you have included black and white. Keep these pastels separate until you have finished your art work.
Well, the Eastern Idaho State Fair is over, but you can still find your HAPPY at the Blackfoot Art Center! How? By painting this smiley little pig!
Here is one of our favorite projects! Great fun; beautiful projects to take home and show off!
I wanted to be sure to include some of the Indian crafts we did last summer. The younger children made wearable weavings on cardboard looms, and the older kids made these plus miniature buffalo hides to which they added Indian symbols. We used fallen twigs, jute, and leather straps and scraps to assemble them.
This awesome project was so popular last summer we did it again this summer - and the results were amazing! These are done with tiny sticky note-sized brightly colored copy paper, folded and glued into a symmetrical design to a black construction paper square. As you can see from these examples, we also incorporated punched out circles.
Everyone likes to doodle! During the first part of July, our youngest students, teens, and adults have all been doodling. What is doodling? Normally, it's one of those rare moments when the left brain gets bored and hands off a little bit of time to the right brain. In other words: the scholarly, logical, memorizing, linear, symbolic, mathematical, time-keeping, names-everything side of the brain gives the playful, intuitive, creative, free-thinking, analogical, nonverbal, visual side of the brain a small window in which to have some fun.
I like to introduce interesting materials, and kids love to try new things (especially unusual techniques and media), so we combined our expert doodling skills with copper tooling, to which we added India Ink and Sharpies for additional color and steel wool to rub the tooling. We mounted everything on mat board with gold or silver wire and decorated the framing with metallic pens. Beautiful results - and great fun!
We've moved to a great new location in downtown Blackfoot! It wasn't easy; a lot of renovation was needed and it took longer than planned, but it was so worth it! We're now up and running in our bright, spacious new facility.
The process is simple. You'll need a 1/2 sheet of watercolor paper, approximately 5" x 8" and a basic watercolor pan set of 8 to 14 colors (nothing fancy). You'll need a soft round (not flat) watercolor brush - size 4 or 6, a mixing palette or tray, clean water, a drawing board, masking tape, and a No. 2 pencil. 
Mask the photo with strips of paper to reveal only the portion you plan to paint. Example: Use the top right quadrant of this landscape photo. 
Watercolor is an ideal medium for "rain art." Makes sense, right? Continuing with watercolor week, our 2nd graders created a rainy day project using crayon resist and wet on wet watercolor. Unfortunately, I did not get many photos of their work in progress or completed projects - I may well have been too busy with the step-by-step process of this project. I borrowed these photos of student work, which are similar to our kids' results, from Elementary Art Fun. In fact, this art blog, also called smART Class, is a great place to go for new and innovative kids' art project ideas. I highly recommend it!
That little paint tin with 8 small pans of color and a brush - remember it? Add a cup of water and a sheet of paper, you're good to go. For art camp, however, I decided we needed a little something more. 
Our youngest artists imagined themselves walking through the rain under an umbrella - staying nice and dry. I cut a few thumb-shaped templates that they traced with a pencil to create the shape of an umbrella. Then they completed the umbrella and themselves under under it, and added lots of color. Once these were done, we placed the template back over the traced area to serve as a mask, and splattered the paper all over with a watery mix of blue watercolor paint. We lifted the template/mask and wa-la! Everything under the umbrella stayed dry! Tip - Show the children how to rub their thumb across the bristles of a large stiff paint brush to create some very nice splatters.
What do we know about middle school kids? They don't usually like to be the center of attention, or to focus on themselves, or to embarrass themselves - especially in front of their friends!
Knowing this, how could I expect them to draw self-portraits? What if it doesn't come out right? What if it looks silly or dumb? What if everyone hates it? OMG! Embarrassing!!! 
Foreshortening is an optical illusion that is created when you draw the part of an object that is closest to you larger than the portion that is farther away. This is actually just a form of perspective, but sometimes it is difficult for beginners (including adults) to see and draw. 
To do this project you need a large sheet of paper, at least 18" by 24." This is because the artists will be life size! Well, at least their hands and feet. Each artist will need the help of another artist to start this project. Begin by standing on the paper (placed on a hard surface), somewhere near the bottom edge and having your partner trace your feet. Now the hands, with fingers outstretched, will need to be traced. The hands should be placed somewhere near the outer edges and above the feet.
