Autumn Owls

It was a whirlwind 5 days at my first artist residency this past week.

Lots of great art completed and some terrific students and staff!



This is the project that Kindergarten completed.  I was inspired by this post by Art with Mr. Giannetto. I feel in love with the presentation, night with a moon.

I changed it around a bit and this is my version.






MATERIALS NEEDED:

- 12" x 12" hardboard, you could use cardboard or poster board
- cardboard owl body and crescent moon
- drywall filler
- plastic spoon
- Crayola Model Magic, you could use salt dough clay or air dry clay as alternative
- acrylic paint (Black, Red, Orange, Yellow, Brown, White)
- splatter box, just a big cardboard box devoted to splattering
- old toothbrush, optional
- tacky glue
- glue gun, adults only
- a twig
- white felt
- black buttons, you could also use black paper
- textured craft foam, you could use paper

PROCEDURE:

This is a 2 - 3 session project depending on your students.

Session 1

Using my 12" x 12" hardboard as a guide I cut out an owl body and crescent moon for each student ahead of time out of corrugated cardboard.

I do this ahead of time.

We work on wax or newspaper.

I gave each student a piece of Model Magic, about the size of a plum.  We talked about wing shapes and each student made 2 wings for their owl.  By having the cardboard owl in front of them they can gauge how it will look.

I handed out some great tools for texturizing. I found these fondant tools at the dollar store, a whole set only cost a $1.00 (woohoo!)


After forming their wings they add some texture to them with the tools.  Set aside when done.

Give each 2 - 4 students a little plate with some drywall filler.  Using their hands they spread the drywall covering the owl on the front.

Everyone gives their hands a quick wipe with a paper towel, (some will need 2 ….or 3)

The kids then add some texture to the drywall.

I have a bin full of tools, things like combs, lego pieces, plastic canvas, etc.

One of the best tools for the owl is a plastic spoon.  You can make feather shapes on the belly of your owl.

Set aside when done.

Both the owl and wings will need to dry overnight.

Hand out the 12"X12" boards.

Using black acrylic, paint the front of the board.

That's it for this session.




Session 2

Using acrylic paint in Fall colours paint your owl body and wings.


Paint the cardboard crescent moon as well.



Set a side to dry.

Now it's time to splatter.  I have a big cardboard box that I use.  It has "Splatter Box Do Not Throw Out" in big letters written on it so I don't accidentally lose it.

Place the black painted board into box.  Using white acrylic paint with a little water mixed in to thin it a bit, splatter some stars onto your board.

I have found that old toothbrushes are the best splatter tools.  You dip the brush into the paint and then just run your finger over the bristles.


At school the splatter station is running at the same time as the kids are painting.

Make sure the kids reach down into the box.

Now it's time to glue.

Using the glue gun, set up a parent volunteer or just have the kids visit you at your glue gun.

Glue on the owl body and the twig to the board.

The kids can glue the wings and the moon on themselves.

While I was working the glue gun I had the kids glue on the eyes.  We used a white felt circle and a black button.

The beak was a triangle cut from some textured craft foam I had.  You could just use some paper.

I also brought in some extra painted paper I had left over from some other projects.  I always keep leftover painted paper for my stash. The students cut out some extra feathers from this paper and glued them to the body while they waited for their turn to get their owl glued.

Here are some of the Kinder owls.




They turned out terrific!

Great job Kindergarten.

See you soon with more residency projects.

Gail

Butterfly Portraits

Here is another butterfly project I recently completed with grade1/2.

It combines a few mediums, papier mache, weaving, using drywall, and the use of dye.

It gave the students a good chance to try out all these techniques.

Lots of 3D action here.





















MATERIALS REQUIRED:

- background substrate, we used 12x12" hardboard but cardboard can easily be used, poster board, or canvas
- acrylic paint
- paper towel strips
- white glue
- newspaper
- masking tape
- drywall filler
- scraps of cardboard
- yarn
- dye, liquid watercolours or food colouring
- coffee filters
- paper
- small goggly eyes
- tacky glue
- 1/2 a pipe cleaner and 2 pony beads for the antennae
- glue gun (adult only)


PROCEDURE:

I had 4 1hr. sessions to complete this with Grade 1/2.  The photos are not in the order of the sessions so here is the schedule I used:

Session 1
- papier mache body
- cut cardboard and drywall
- weave flower circle

Session 2
- paint background
- paint butterfly body
- paint butterfly cardboard
- dye coffee filter

Session 3
- paint drywalled pieces
- paint little bit on woven circles
- paint paper for flower petals
- glue dyed filter on butterfly shape and trim

Session 4
- cut out flower petals
- cut out leaves
- glue on pieces
- add eyes and mouth to butterfly
- add text

Take a section of newspaper and roll into a body shape.  Tape with masking tape.

Mix up some white glue and water (1 to 1 ratio).

Have some paper towel strips ready to go.  Our butterfly body is pretty small so not much papier mache is required.

Cover butterfly body with 2 layers of mache, just enough to cover it and hold it together.


Set aside to dry. (overnight)

With scraps of cardboard cut out a long strip for a stem and a circle for a flower centre.



I did not use the petal shapes in this project.

Working on top of wax paper or newspaper, coat the front of the pieces with drywall filler.


Set aside to dry, (6 hrs.)

In the meantime paint your background with blue acrylic paint.  Originally I was going to have them all taped so that we would also paint in the ground section.  I decided at the last minute to remove the tape, this gave us all sky and more room to place all our elements.


Set aside to dry.

Out of some extra corrugated cardboard I cut a butterfly shape.  For the kids I pre cut this for them, if I had more time I would have had them cut their own.


We painted them white.

Set aside to dry.

We painted some paper red for our flower petals.  I used some paintable wall paper to get that nice texture.

If you use paintable wallpaper you must use acrylic paint, the tempera doesn't stick.

I don't have a picture of the process, just the end product.  I had the students dye some coffee filters.

We used Easter egg dye which I always have on hand for Pysanky.

I put some different colours into little cups and gave them eyedroppers to use for each colour.

The colours are always spectacular!

We worked on top of a piece of newspaper that was on top of a piece of wax paper.  I kept the newspaper as it had wonderful colours to use in future collage projects.

When the papier mache body was dry we painted it black.

Glue the dry dyed coffee filter to the white butterfly, right on top of the white.  It needed to be painted white to show off those spectacular colours.

Trim away the excess to reveal the butterfly shape.

Paint the stem and the flower centre with acrylic paints.

To add extra interest I had each student weave a circle to use as a flower.


I use the technique I outline here in the woven eyed frog project.

Glue the pieces together on the background.  For fussy pieces you can have an adult assist with a glue gun.  We used a glue gun for the butterfly wings and the antennae.  Add 2 goggly eyes and a mouth if you wish.


I ran some green card stock through the paper shredder to make some long stems.  We also used scraps of green painted paper to make the leaves.

Finally we added the text "Flutter By Butterfly".


Some kids switched it to "Butterfly Flutter By".



That's it.

See you next time, school is almost done, counting the days!

Gail

Toucan Portraits

I completed a month long residency on Thursday.  I had a great time working with 18 classes on a wide range of projects.



Here is one that we did, rain forest Toucans.

Here are some of the student's work.














MATERIALS REQUIRED:

- substrate, we are using 1/8"  hardboard, also called MDF.  It is the stuff I use for art boards.  Ours is cut to a 12"x12" square and works out to be 31 cents each, so it's a bargain.  Home Depot will cut the large sheets for you with their fancy cutting machine.
- cardboard, heavy corrugated or thin
- template
- drywall filler
- wax paper
- brown, green, black, yellow, red, orange, blue acrylic paint
- black paper
- recycled paper
- pipe cleaner
- black pony bead or goggly eye
- tacky glue
- Mod Podge
- black yarn

PROCEDURE:

Paint board green.  This is just the background.  You could vary the colours a bit if you want.


Set aside to dry.

Cut the Toucan pieces out of cardboard.  Here is my template.

You also need to cut a branch for your bird to sit on.

Cover one side of the cardboard with drywall filler.  Make sure the beak and bird will match.  Despite our best efforts we still had birds that did not match the beaks. (wrong side)
Leave overnight to dry.

When the drywall is dry start painting your pieces.

Paint the branch brown with a touch of black for the shaded parts.

Paint the body of your bird black.  At school the kids painted the entire body black. That was the end of that session.  Next session they added colour on top, acrylics are quite opaque so it worked well.

Paint face and breast.

Paint a brightly coloured beak.

I gave the kids about 1/3rd of a white pipe cleaner.  They then painted it the colour they wanted the feet to be.  You could just use multi-coloured ones.

Let all pieces dry.

To make leaves I handed out some thin corrugated paper I had.  It was the packing material from a box of dishes that I had saved.

You could also use a crimper or just paint some recycled paper with different shades of green and yellow.

Let dry.

When all pieces are dry start the assembling.

Cut some nice leaf shapes out of green paper. Glue into place.  Glue branch into place.  At this time figure out where bird is going to sit.  Using black paper add the tail onto the board.  You could also use black paint.

Glue bird into place, beak, and feet.

Add eye.

You can add some yarn for the line between the beaks.

Finally add a coat of Mod Podge to seal everything into place and add a nice shiny coat.

Great work, everyone.

See you next time.

Gail

Prairie Landscapes and a Page from the Art Journal

On Friday I presented at the Early Childhood Education Conference.  Those of you that joined me completed these 6 inchies representing art projects from my "I am Canadian" series.  I had a great time and thanks to the ECEC committee for inviting me!

One of my favourites is the Prairie Landscape which I also did with Grade 1/2 in my last residency.

The large project looks like this.  I had already podged it before photographing so sorry for the glare.

Here is some of the student work.












MATERIALS REQUIRED:

- 12" x 12" piece of masonite or MDF, cardboard, or heavy paper
- sky blue, brown, yellow, white, red or green, acrylic paint
- sponge
- piece of corrugated cardboard
- chipboard or light cardboard from a cereal or cracker box
- drywall medium
- train clip art
- green painter's masking tape
- Mod podge
- tacky glue

PROCEDURE:

For the substrate (base) I used 1/8" masonite.  It's the same material I use to make my art boards.  I have a 'father in law' with a woodshop so he is nice enough to prep all my wood for me. Thanks Hank!

Home Depot sells masonite/MDF in 2' x 4' pieces now called builder cuts.  Much easier to handle and relatively inexpensive. (my 12" x 12" board works out to 37 cents)

You can also use cardboard or heavy paper (poster board) for this project.  If working on paper you can easily substitute liquid tempera for the acrylic just don't add the Mod podge at the end.

I taped off the horizon line for my students.  This is Grade 1/2 so we learn a little chant before painting. "Paint, paint, when we hit the tape we STOP!"  I get them to hold up their hands for stop.

Paint in the sky with blue acrylic. We are working on top of wax paper.

For the most part this works very well.  Of course you always seem to have one that forgets about the tape…..sigh.


Leave to dry, about 30 minutes.

While our board is drying we will work on the grain elevator.

For Grade1/2 I use a template.  It's amazing how different they will still turn out to be because of scissor skills.

We cut out our elevators out of thin cardboard or chipboard.

Working on top of wax paper, add a layer of drywall medium to your grain elevator.  I just have the kids use their finger to spread.


Leave to dry, about 5 hrs or so.

When my blue paint is dry I remove the green tape and move it so it is on the blue with the edge now on the unpainted part. (horizon line)


Paint the bottom with brown acrylic paint.

I take a piece of sponge and some white acrylic paint and sponge in some clouds.

Using a piece of corrugated cardboard on it's end I add yellow paint.

You want to still be able to see the brown background.

When the drywall medium is dry you can paint your grain elevator.  I gave the kids a choice of red or green.

We added the Alberta Wheat Pool logo.  You can adapt this to the logo of the wheat pool in your area.

We also added a door made from black paper.

I found a clip art train and we glued it and the grain elevator in place using tacky glue.

If you are working on masonite, canvas, or cardboard you can add a coat of Mod podge to seal everything and get that nice shiny coat.

That's it.

Here's a page from the art journal.  I'm having a tough time adapting this November.  It seems winter just snuck up on us here in Calgary.


We are supposed to have warmer weather in a few days to melt all that snow….thank goodness.

To make this page I added some painted paper scraps to my background as well as a piece of textured wallpaper that I cut into a tree trunk shape.

I added a quick coat of gesso.  you can also use white acrylic or my new favourite art supply, plain white latex primer from the hardware store….a little thinner but still adds tooth to your surface and is erasable.  (and did I mention CHEAP, I got a 7.4 litre can at WalMart for $10.00 on clearance)

Paint in your background.  I did a twilight scene…. with the end of daylight savings it seems so dark now and I'm still trying to get my head around that.

Paint the tree black, add a few leaves that have not fallen yet.  I also used some silver paper.  A little glitter glue for the frost.  For my text I used a white paint sharpie and a fine black sharpie.



See you next time.