Fall colors in Perspective

Perspective - again!  I think these lessons on perspective will yield art projects that the Sm'Arties will be happy to claim. 

Our Sm'Arties lesson this week is inspired by these very pretty acrylics by Catherine Hogarth, a contemporary artist who lives in Canada. I love her use of perspective and her vibrant colors.  I first saw her works on the MoxieFabWorld blog, in a Tuesday Trigger paper craft challenge. When I saw that first picture, I gasped mentally - so pretty!  I would love to have one of her pictures hanging above my fireplace - oh, wait, I don't have a fireplace. 

Sm'Arties remember what "contemporary" means- at least 2 of them do.  We learned about contemporary artists when we did a project inspired by the art of Bernard Hoyes last spring.  I showed the Sm'Arties copies of Ms. Horvath's pictures printed from her website with her permission - Thank you!

The Sm'Arties each chose a picture to copy and went right to work with pencils first.   I had a mix of simpler and more complex pictures.  The Sm'Arties surprised me by ALL picking the complex pictures, assuring that art class would go over time.  Good thing Art is the last class of the day. The pumpkins picture was the favorite.



















No shading!  We'll do shading with our
watercolor pencils!

I have several brown pens I use for scrapbooking and in my Ephesian journal.  I love brown pens - instant vintage.  The Sm'Arties used them to outline over their pencil lines.

Time to shade in with watercolor pencils.  We used LOTS of red, orange, gold, pink, and brown, often mixed together.  I encouraged them to color hard, but allowed them to go lightly if they preferred.























The last step is to wash the colors with a wet paintbrush, which makes the colors pop and allows more blending.  Wetting these colors always makes an impact. 

This lesson so nicely reinforces the perspective drawing we have been learning.  For homework, they all took a picture or two home to do using whatever coloring media they choose.  I am looking forward to seeing the results!

Getting Perspective

This week's Sm'Arties class is inspired by this little handout from Practical Pages (Now THERE'S an on-the-ball homeschool Mum!  I love knowing that many many miles away (or kilometers?) another homeschool family is reaching out to share the wealth of their knowledge and resources.  Thank you, Nadine!). 

Now that we have our pencils sharpened, this week we did a few quick drawings to demonstrate perspective.  As I was drawing along, I encouraged the children to do "kindergarten-style trees" - quick, quick!

Their homework is to bring back 7 little drawings on a  sheet of 11"x17" paper, showing these seven laws of perspective.  I hope they all "see" foreshortening better than I do :)  I expect this little lesson to yield fruit in the way of better drawings and paintings all year long.  I wish I had learned this when I was a child.

I took one single picture, and then my camera's battery quit.  Here's the picture:

This Sm'Artie's line of trees show both  principles that things nearer are drawn larger and further down on the page.

Pencil in a new schoolyear

I have so many plans and inspirations for this Sm'Artie year - many more than we can do!

 

Who wouldn't be excited to see these Sm'arties ready for art? 

I want to enjoy making and exchanging Artist's Trading Cards (ATCs).  I want us to paint on rocks.  I want us to learn to draw a little better.  I want to introduce the Sm'Arties to real oil paint from little tubes that stays wet for days.  I want us to carve rubber stamps.  And I want us to learn about art, artists, styles, movements. 

I'm editing pictures so we can have a fresh blog header, and having fun with Picnik.com.  I just love our last year's picture, but it's a new year!  By the end of the week, I want a 2010-2011 picture smiling from the header.

Kathy at Art Projects for Kids starts her students with fresh pencils, and I thought we would, too!  I bought a box of Ticonderoga pencils, gathered my Sharpies from their migratory summer homes, and let the Sm'Arties have at it. Did I tell you that I just love Sharpies?  So do the Sm'Arties.

I offered little strips of yellow cardstock if they wanted to work out a design.  (I don't like that cardstock anyway - I was glad to chop it into strips)  There were tiger stripes, polka dots, some kind of marbly-looking design, just plain stripes - lots of fun; no wrong answers.

 Once pencils were all decorated, they drew a still life - a little stone bird in a tall skinny cage - just a little something decorative Peg has sitting in the corner of her dining room. 

It's kind of hard to take a picture of a group drawing a still life, and include the still life in the photo.  What you get is mostly the space between:

 

 During Science Geeks class, the group was divided into teams - girls vs. boys.  Since our group is more heavily weighted toward masculine, JD was on the girls' team.  He returned to character several times in the course of the afternoon.  He is quite the ham.

It's great to be back!

While we are waiting for Sm'Arties to start again...

...this has got to be the easiest birthday party craft ever!

Hairbrushes from Dollar Tree, stick-on "jewels" from the fabric crafts section of Michael's.

The results are sparkly-spectacular!

My definition of a successful birthday sleepover:

Nobody cried.

Nobody threw up.

Last Tie Dye of the Summer

This has turned out to be the Summer of Tie-Dye.  I've tie-dyed with Sm'Arties, family friends, Gymnastics Camp, and now one last Gymnastics Camp. 

It was hot out there.  Again.  I wound up with wrinkled blue fingers.  Again.  But the children LOVED it!  And so do I.

Right after our last Gym camp, when my fingers were still cramping from wringing T-shirts, Earthgirl had a friend over, and she arrived wearing a tie-dyed BANDANA made at another camp.  Bandanas!  Easy rinsing and wringing, and space-saving!  I determined immediately that my next group tie-dye would feature bandanas.  This worked out doubly well, since some of the children from Session 1 returned for Session 2.  Hobby Lobby has nice, big bandanas for $1.  If you have a 40%-off coupon, your first bandana costs only $.60.  Woo woo!

We tie-dyed with 49 children.  Wowee, if we had used all T-shirts, I'd still be rinsing and wringing now!

Tulip's Turquoise was our favorite color.  Almost all the bandanas were dyed blue.

Lesson learned from my first experience using bandanas:  Since they are not as squashy as T-shirts, they should be tied up really tight, or the dye seeps in and none of the lines will be really sharp and white.  The ones in the picture above appear to be solid blue, but they all turned out well. 

Bandanas would also be great used with the spray "tie-dye."  We used this to "tie-dye" T-shirts at Earthgirls 7th birthday party, the 70s party, and it is easy. 

The teens did T-shirts again.  While the younger groups get only 1 dunk (it's all we can do to get the whole group finished as it is), the teens have free rein to get creative and dye all afternoon if they want to.  Of course, they do their own rinsing and wringing. (Rinse and wring, rinse and wring - doesn't that phrase just sing in your head?)  The teens did some purty shirts.

So now the question arises:  Should I tie-dye bandanas with the Sm'Arties?  Maybe in November!

Quick! Take a picture before it rains!

Practice - practice - practice - practice

Earthgirl decided she wanted to draw better eyes back when she was maybe 5 years old.  She drew eyes and drew eyes and drew...eyes.  She studied eyes in other drawings, copied eyes from others' artwork, looked at little nuances.  Last year, she sat me down to teach me to draw an eye, and we just drew ONE HUGE EYE on the page.  It was the best eye I ever drew.  I did not keep practicing, though, and now I'd have to start over learning to draw that eye.  But my little Sm"artie can grab the sidewalk chalk and do this:

Practice makes perfect.

Encouraging Young Artists

This post from Nadine over at Practical Pages is so good I feel compelled to feature it.