Saturday, July 23, 2022

Silly (Sneaky) Seagulls

 

If you've ever tried to have a picnic at the beach, you know that the neighborhood seagulls will try to steal your lunch.


So we decided those little rascals would be a perfect subject to illustrate as we continue with our Oceans & Seashores theme this month.


We started with a pale sky-blue background (12" x 18" sulfite paper). We filled in the top 1/3 with our sky using soft pastels, and some artists added a few seagulls in the distance. 


We then set it aside to create a wet-on-wet watercolor ocean on a sheet of 9" x 12" watercolor paper. We added course salt for texture, and let it dry. The ocean could be made first for more drying time.


We observed a few photos of seagulls and then drew our own on a sheet of white drawing paper (9" x 12") using charcoal pencils and soft pastels, which we smudged and smeared to create shadows. 


We also added a silly detail or two, such as sunglasses or a scarf. We even had a pirate! When the seagulls were completed, we cut them out.



Next, we glued a 9" x 12" piece of brown or tan paper to the bottom of the blue background paper to create our sandy beach. Then we tore the ocean paper to create a few waves and glued it to the center section of the blue paper, overlapping the beach edge. We added some torn sand paper here and there, including a mound for our seagull to stand on, and marked it up with white oil pastels. We also glued on a few rocks, seashells, and bits of a snack wrapper (we ate the snacks). 

The last step was to glue the seagull into the scene and cut out a picture of one of the snacks from the wrapper, such as a cookie, to glue it into our seagull's beak. 

For more about this project, see our earlier 2019 post.

No comments: