Penguins by Little Artists

Our Little Artists created their own little penguins! 


First the backgrounds are painted with bright colors. No rules! 




Next, while the backgrounds are drying, the kids use simple templates to trace the basic penguin shapes. 

The little penguin parts are then cut out and glued together. We added googly eyes because kids love 'em! 

Finally, the penguins are glued into their new homes.

Penguins in Mixed Media

Penguins - we all love them. 
So who can resist fuzzy BABY penguins???

This wonderful wintery art project celebrates those adorable babies and their 'happy feet' using everything from a painted, splattered background, to a carefully drawn baby penguin with blended charcoal highlights and shadows. Sharpies are used to define the facial markings, and then the baby is cut out and glued to the background. 

So cute!

 

 

 

 

 

Wintering Bird Collage

It is my belief that children learn much more about the world around them by careful observation and the subsequent creation of nature-based art. 

This is a 3-D mixed media collage that required the study of certain wintering birds, planning an art composition, drawing, and practicing fine muscle skills to complete the project.



We observed several photos of blue jays and cardinals, which are similar in shape and size, brightly colored, and frequently found in snowy environments. 

We drew them, colored them with oil pastels, cut them out, and added a few feathers. 

Then we created pine tree branches using brown and green construction paper, and added snow with styluses and white tempera paint. 

After it dried, we perched our birds in the trees using glue dots to create a 3-D look. 

Giant Snowmen!

How do you build a giant snowman? Easy. It's all a matter of perspective. If you were a bug -- or a kid making a snow angel -- and looking up at a snowman, it would look very, very large! It's all a matter of perspective. 

Instead of starting with three stacked circles, we drew partial, overlapping circles up from a corner of a 12" x 18" sheet of paper. Then we added details, making sure that closer things (near the bottom) were larger and things in the distance (higher up) were smaller. 

We outlined our snowmen with black Sharpies, then again with Crayola markers, which we "painted" with water to bleed into a nice bluish snowy tint. We painted the rest of our details, then added a nice colorful background. 

 

 

 

More Winter Trees!

These amazing tree scenes were created by painting the background paper with tempera, then scraping white paper with credit cards to make the trees. These are then cut out, and carefully arranged and glued over the background. Finally, tissue 'leaves' are glued to the artwork to fall from the trees. 

I just LOVE this project! The artwork has such a lovely abstract look. Aren't these beautiful?