Sandcastles Art Project

This project is made with acrylic paint and sand paper. Make sure that the sky is completely painted in. Use a decent paint brush that is flat and a little firm. The castle can be made with simple shapes. After all it's made of sand.

3D Shape Drawing Lesson

What can you make out of a cylinder? Vocab: The circle at the top of the cylinder is foreshortened when seen from the side.

Fairy Tree Drawing Lesson

This is my favorite type of project because it can be made with any available supplies and it gives lots of scope to the imagination. A perfect example of freedom within structure. Help students set up the main idea and teach them a little about perspective (in the tire swing or window, or in the depth of the forest. Then let the students add anything they can imagine to their tree or forest. This would also make a good writing prompt for a story.

Painting as Therapy?

Add the spray and the foam at the tips of the waves and the base of the rocks. Remember the spray in the background will be dull and misty. Save the bright white for the foreground.

Oops! I forgot to photograph a step! The atmospheric perspective is very important. Mix the dark brown in to the gray a little at a time. The rocks in the background will be lighter and smaller. They will almost disappear into the horizon. The rocks get darker and browner as the come forward until they are a pure, dark brown. They will also have thicker paint up close. The reflections are much easier than they look. Just a few smooth strokes back and forth.



Paint the blue sky at the top, the white clouds, and blend gray into the white as it get darker towards the horizon line.

I used water soluble oils for this, but acrylic would work too. I used white, light blue, brown, and gray. Ideally, the brown and gray will be mixed from the same blue as the sky.

This is what I came up with for yesterday's project. I feel like Bob Ross! All my students are children except one. Out of the blue a lady called and asked if I would teach her mom to paint. Her mom has Parkinson's and she said that it is important for her to keep using her hands. I don't know much about this yet, but almost all my life I've been passionate about the idea of using art as therapy. Both physical and otherwise. I'm not at all confident in my ability as a painting instructor, but I've found some projects that these ladies really enjoy!

Hot Air Balloon Coloring Page

Yikes! That last post was quite ambitious! Here's a simple was to introduce the same fundamental concept. Have the students decide what time of day it is and where the light is coming from. Draw their attention to where the light would hit each section of the air balloon. There are absolutely beautiful books at the library with pictures that would show this. The students can practice shading with any medium. They can go light to dark or even add light yellow for sunlight and bluish for shadows. You could tell them that a popular professional technique is to color the balloons in solid with marker and the add highlights and shadows on top with colored pencil, chalk, crayon, etc. Younger children can just color it alongside older siblings. I have another lesson in which the students do the whole thing themselves, but by the time they design their balloons, they have little patience to learn about shading. I'll post that lesson soon. So, now I have to come up with a painting project for my oldest student (87) by tomorrow. We have a blast when I have a good project...

Impasto!

This project is hot of the press. We tried it for the first time today in class. This tree was done by Alicia. Hers was better than mine so I thought I'd share it with you. Impasto (layering thick paint to create texture) is my new favorite! This lesson teaches students about color mixing and light, as well as the technique of impasto. I used Liquitex heavy body acrylic paint mixed with Liquitex matte gel to make it thick and extend the paint. This is a little pricey, I'm sure you can experiment with cheaper options. The students didn't use brushes; only plastic palette knives. We painted on light blue mat board, but I think I would use art board or gessoed masonite next time. All this stuff is much cheaper online than in craft stores.

Oaxacan Painted Lizard Lesson

The best part of this project is the bumpy texture you feel when you pet the lizard! This is thick acrylic paint on card stock, applied with a blunt tooth pick or small dowel. Puff paint works well, especially on mat board, but younger students have a hard time making even dots. Of course, even if the colors get crazy and inconsistent, the lizard still looks cool. To do a good job takes a long time, but encourage your child that it's worth the effort. If you use card stock, you should be able to run it through the copier to save time. If you use mat board, you or the students will have to trace a stencil first. The students can always create their own creatures, but I've found this to be a good intro project. There's plenty of work to do in the decorating. This pattern can be used with very young students. It can be covered with colors using any technique and then cut out. An adult will have to do it, this one's hard to cut! When the colorful lizard is glued to black paper, it really stands out.

Preschool Penguin Project

Check out these clay penguins to go along with this lesson!



Starting June 1st, I'll be teaching Preschool art again at Trinity. It was so much fun last year! Here is the lesson I've been working on this morning. I'll read Playful Little Penguins by Tony Mitton. I'll probably bring in some tool or white sheets for the little ones to imagine snow and ice. It will take quite the imagination in 100 degree weather! I print this sheet off on card stock and cut it out ahead of time. The students glue the pieces and add feet, eyes and a beak. It seems simple, but students have added all kinds of stories and details to their projects. Print out this page and you'll have an instant project. Snow could be made out of many different things. Here I used chalk on blue paper. As a follow up, I may encourage them to draw the penguins from scratch. Moving from step to step like that is good scaffolding.

How to Draw Quail

Journey Age 5
If you can't see the instructions, just click on image to enlarge.

Saguaro Blossom Drawing Lesson

I love working with Prismacolor colored pencils on colored paper. I usually use card stock, but with scrapbooks being so popular, there are so many wonderful papers to choose from! Simply using any background color other than white works like magic. For my last Wednesday class of the semester, I decided to send the students off searching the tops of the saguaros for flowers and the evening skies for bats! At the beginning of class I showed the book Cactus Cafe by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld, illustrated by Paul Mirocha. Here is my example and a student example. Today's class added treasure caves and skeletons to the background. Lessons include perspective, horizon line, use of dark and light colors (green)...

Game Board Templates

Check out my new post to see how these cane be made into a box!!!



Here are the promised templates used to make fimo board games. Very simple, I know, but anything to save time, right? It always takes me a second to orient them right to connect them! I place them end to end without overlap and tape them with clear packaging tape after they are designed. This can be presented as a design challenge. Even if Fimo isn't used, or is only used for the game pieces, my afternoon students spent a solid hour drawing their own ideas for a game. I hope you can print them off OK.

For other coloring pages and templates check out these posts.

Polymer clay Fimo Board Games

Today was the last day of class for my Tuesday classes this semester. As a special project we made board games! This is the example game which I played with my students as an into to the project. These shots make it look like quite an epic journey for those ants! These games are 3-D! The game board is made of white mat board designed with markers. The baked clay is glued on the board with PVA glue. The game pieces were also made with clay. The morning class made Gotham city, beach and underwater themes, rockets shooting through the solar system, a speed racer track, and a kitchen with a hidden cookie jar! Amazing! For the afternoon class, I started them with a template. "Freedom within structure." In some ways this worked better because it's hard to design a game board that works well. You could easily make your own template, but I'll try to upload mine tomorrow. Dice can be bought separately. I cut some blank cards from colorful card stock in case the students wanted to add extra adventure. Just think of the countless ways these games could be used to teach and stretch students creativity and problem solving!

How to Draw a Cityscape at Night

For my first post, I'll start with an easy project. This picture was done by one of my students (the arches aren't to perspective, but the rest looks great). Start by showing this ,or any other example, and ask the children to brainstorm anything else they might want in their picture. I'd love to get a beautiful poster of a city scape and night, but for now I just print off pictures from an image search, or look for a book at the library.
Materials: Any kind of black paper (card stock, construction paper, pastel paper)
Chalk pastel pencils or sticks (I like Prismacolor brand Nupastels)
Procedure: If you want a bridge, help students with the vanishing point. This is just a small example of perspective. Don't overwhelm younger students with the technical aspect, just direct them to draw a diagonal line. The buildings are simple shapes staked up. Take time to explain the mirror image in the reflection, and show them how easy it is to blend the chalk to look like water!

Teaching Private Art Classes

I'm overwhelmingly grateful for the turn my life has taken this last year! I'm no longer substitute teaching, but rather working full time as a private art teacher. If only I'd kept a blog of the journey thus far!. There's no way I could have anticipated the challenges and blessings I've encountered working for myself. Every week I pour hours of work into each lesson. It feels like an extravagant luxury, but I keep telling myself that someday I'll use the lessons again. While I'm sure that's true, I also want to share them with others. At a time when so many people are out of work, I'd love to see other artists/teachers use what I've learned. Each post will have a new lesson or idea.