Scratch-Art Action Animals - We loved this!! Although some of the kids had doubts when it came to covering their entire picture with black oil pastel, it was a real 'wow!' moment as we scratched it away to reveal the picture beneath!
'Action Animals' are drawn with thick black marker on 120gsm paper, using large flat shapes and little or no detail. Then the entire page is coloured heavily with crayon or oil pastel, taking care to leave no white areas, and using light bright colours that contrast well with the black. I also encourage students to use multiple colours in each flat area. Then a coat of solid black goes over everything.
The black is scratched away, revealing the colours and line drawing beneath.
Adapted from this lesson at Art Projects for Kids :)
Living on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, we have a number of coral reef islands on our door step. When I saw 'Sapphire Coral Fish' by Canadian artist Sandra Silberzweig, I knew that this would be a beautiful inspiration for a reef-themed picture. We started with a discussion about Sandra's use of bright colours, black outlines and pattern.
Molly B
Luka M
We created our own Reef Fish pictures using cut paper, fluoro paint and oil pastel. This project was such a lot of fun to do, and they are all beautiful!
We have uninvited but welcome guests who visit us each morning around breakfast time.... They're a bit noisy, and they can be a bit messy (!) but they don't overstay their welcome, and I love seeing them :)
We've created Rainbow Lorikeet pictures using neon oil pastels on black paper. After a bit of experimenting and practice we start by drawing our birds in black oil pastel on black paper, then filling them in with white oil pastel, trying not to go over the black lines. We then create a border design with white lines, going over them to make sure they are firmly drawn.
The best part is adding colour with the neon pastels - they really have the 'wow' factor, and the kids love using them!
With Mother's Day just around the corner, we decided to create special Peacock pictures for our Mums.
After guided drawing, we used oil pastel on black paper, with free choice of colour and being sure to include lots of layering and blending.
Before adding colour we used a solid undercoat of white pastel on our peacock bodies and the 'eyes' in their tails to make the colour bright and bring those key elements of our designs forward.
Our peacocks are just fabulous - I know they'll be treasured by our Mums for many years to come!
I watched this very cool video on You Tube (thanks to Elementary Art Fun and several others!) and knew that we could use it as inspiration for some great art.
Suitably inspired, we used oil pastel to make patterns on colored paper, before drawing and cutting out our chameleons and shapes to create our backgrounds. Kids had complete freedom to create their designs, and in creating their paper-cut backgrounds.
Although I really don't like using templates, on this occasion I did use a chameleon template that I made from a cereal box. With only 1.5 hours for the entire lesson there was no way we could fit everything in!
We used a pin to score a line down the chameleon's spine and leg joints to ensure a sharp fold, and secured him to the background using a dot (not a lot!) of glue on each leg.
(Thanks to Larissa at mmmcrafts for the pin idea - I've always used a scissor blade for scoring, and there are always a few who press too heavily and cut right through their page. The pin makes a perfect score line every time.)
Our glue routine has rapidly evolved since my discovery of Pinterest (still as addicted as I was 10 minutes after joining :))
Before Pinterest I dreaded projects that involved glue of any kind - keeping the bottles clean and functioning just wasn't worth the effort!
I tried the glue sponge, which I'm sure works great if you have your own room & storage space... but I have to carry everything with me to every lesson, so it was too bulky and heavy.
Then I discovered the little glue pot (8 for $2 from the Dollar Tree) that I had kids dip a matchstick in to pick up exactly the right amount of glue for just-the-right-size dots. Wonderful, but I STILL had to clean up those pots!
Even this had a solution, when I read a great Pinterest hint about dipping the glue bottle lids in oil to stop them clogging..... so I smeared some Vasaline inside each pot, and voila! the dried glue just peels away!
I'm happy :)
And WHY has it taken me so long to work it out????
UPDATE: Now I just use old milk bottle lids. One at the end of each table, shared between 3 kids. They stack and transport nicely into a small takeaway food container, 2 layers separated by a piece of cardboard cut to size from a cereal box. At the end of the week I throw them away - even easier, no messy containers to store and virtually no wastage!!
Our last lesson for Term 1!
We're doing something a bit special this week...
Using oil pastels on colored paper, we've created two pictures that are the same - except for the color! The kids had free choice of subject - many chose Easter eggs, Georgia O'Keefe style flowers, hearts or stars. The instruction was to make their subject based on a simple shape and large in the page. Color was to be applied thickly to the main subject, with a strong outline, and some pattern was to be applied to the background.
Then we cut them up and wove them back together.
The effect is quite abstract, but our original subject is still (for the most part) recognizable.
They certainly remind me of the broken-glass effect of the Cubists :)
Thank you Natalie at SmART Class for the original idea (I do seem to get a LOT of ideas from Natalie - her site is well worth a visit!!!)
I can't believe the year is already nearly a quarter gone! I've had a fabulous time this term, and I hope you have too!
This week we have created Puzzle Tree pictures using oil pastel. Thanks to La Galerie de Christelle for this great idea, which I found on Pinterest :)
We
started by drawing a simple tree on our page, ensuring that the trunk
reached from the bottom of the page to the top, and that the branches
stretched right out to the edges of the page.
We
flipped the page over and sketched a simple hilly landscape (no more
than 3 hills, and a bright sun in the sky) which we colored heavily with
oil pastel. As we colored each shape, we ensured that there were two
thick layers, using colors close together on the color wheel, and with
the lightest color on the bottom. We then used the sgraffito technique
to engrave patterns into the top layer so that the lighter color below
showed through.
The kids decided for themselves whether
to color their skies - some applied the same engraving technique to
their suns, others decided to leave their sky white.
The
final step is the tricky one! We flipped our pages back over and cut
out our tree shapes. This left the negative space of the background
between the branches, which we reassembled as a 'puzzle' onto black
paper. It was important to cut out all our shapes and assemble them one
by one before we started gluing pieces down - It's very easy to get
confused, but a bit easier if you remember to find the corner pieces
first!
To complete this picture we learned about
sgraffitto engraving into oil pastel, positive and negative space, and
the importance of following directions.
Our
Puzzle Trees are really very effective. Some of our trees became very
abstract in the puzzling process, but somehow still retained their
'tree-ness' quality.
They each turned out very differently, and uniquely
splendid in their own way.... Well done!
We're still on our Christmas (Summer) holiday break here in Australia, but here is one of the projects my kids did with Lee (my wonderful friend who taught the classes for me while I was away at the end of last year.)
The kids created a collage of torn newspaper trees on a black background, and finished them with oil pastel. They have a real Fred Williams feel to them :)
These are particularly relevant to us now, while we are experiencing unusually extreme temperatures of up to 40C (even as high as 45C out at Birdsville earlier in the month!). For those of you who work in Fahrenheit I think that's 104 - 113. Very very hot!
Needless to say the fire danger is high, and bush fires have been ravaging many parts of the country.
These are the last of our oil pastel Storm Pictures. Go to my previous post to see how we created them.
I have been so pleased, during our art shows which conclude our lessons, to hear comments that relate to the techniques we've been practicing.
"I like the way this artist has blended the colors in the sky to get a stormy effect."
"I like the way this artist has used curved lines to show the energy."
Bronte B
Bella G
Sophie K
I just had to include this great paper sculpture made by Joe, one of my talented year 7 students. He cuts and folds small rectangles of paper, assembling them into intricate sculptures. This one is a cobra. Isn't it fantastic?
It is coming into the storm season here in Queensland - as we move into summer, afternoon storms become common, and later in the season Cyclones become more likely. Living at Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast, one of my favourite things is watching the afternoon storms sweep in from the ocean. As the sky blackens, sometimes the sun breaks through to bathe the ocean and land below in heightened brilliant color.
Image from Pinterest - source unknown
When I found the oil pastel 'Sailboats in Stormy Seas' by Floriada artist Chris Jeanguenat, I knew it would be the perfect inspiration for an oil pastel lesson (Reproduced with the artist's permission).
Sailboats in Stormy Seas: Chris Jeanguenat
We started by looking at photographs and a discussion about storms - the power and energy, and what sorts of lines (diagonal, curved, jagged) we might use to convey that. We also quickly discussed what might be in the foreground (waves? a rocky pier?), middle distance (boats?) and background (ocean? a headland with buildings? an island?) and how we might simplify these shapes into stylized form.
Students mapped out their compositions using large stylized shapes using black oil pastels. For this picture I have them start with the foreground and move backwards into the picture overlapping shapes as they go.
Only then did we really look at the oil pastel example by Chris Jeanguenat. I deliberately try not to show examples too soon, as many children think that this must be the 'right' way, and while I want them to draw inspiration, I don't want them to copy. Looking at the artist's picture, we talked about the artist's use of color - using at least 2 related (close) colors in each area, with overlapping, layering and blending. We also noticed the lovely contrast between the dark stormy colors of the sky and the brighter, lively colors of the boats and the sea.
Students used oil pastels to color their pictures, while I circulated, reminding them of the key points. Finally, they use black oil pastel to further delineate the main shapes. When think they are finished I encourage them to view their work from a distance, thinking about the key points and to see if they have achieved the stormy effect.
Saturday (September 1) was the first day of Spring, so it seemed a good time to create a light and lively dragonfly picture. Looking at pictorial examples we observed the basic structure of the insect body - the three main sections of head, thorax and abdomen, and how the legs and wings attach to the thorax. Then we looked at how simply a basic insect template can easily be changed into various types of insects simply by altering the shape and size of the wings and body component parts.
We created the background of our pictures with leaf texture rubbings of flourescent oil pastel and watercolor wash . While our backgrounds dried we drew our insects, starting with the 3 basic body sections and then altering them to create insects of our choice - many chose dragonflies or butterflies, while others went for bees, preying mantis and a variety of other insects. We traced over all lines of the insects with sharpies and finer permanent black markers before adding color with the flourescent oil pastels, then cutting them out and gluing onto our backgrounds.
Our pictures are shimmering with a lovely iridescence, and are very Spring-ish!
Using oil pastel scratch art technique we’ve created drawings of our
favourite Olympic moments. First cover page thickly with colored oil
pastels (I stress the need to use light, bright colors that will show up
well through the black). Paint over the entire area with black paint
(add a dash of dish-washing liquid to help it spread and adhere to the
oil pastel). Use skewers or other sharp tool to scratch your design into
the black. While they were drying we created an oil pastel border using similar color choices – light and bright.
