I am so proud of the great job my students did today with their pear paintings. We started with a red background to give the finished paintings some extra depth and interest. I love how the red peeks through here and there. Here are the photos of their wonderful paintings. I did a tutorial video of this lesson too!
This was a fun and easy project done the week of Mother's Day. We started with raw 2" x 6" wood pieces (cut into 7 1/2" & 4" lengths). I had the kids paint the front side of the board with white gesso. While it dried, they used bird templates to trace and cut bird shapes out of scrapbook papers. Then I had them use sandpaper to rough up the edges and bring out the grain of the wood. We then "stained" the wood with liquid acrylics (rubbed in with a damp cloth and then removed, leaving the stain in the cracks and edges). The bird wings were hand sewn by the students with felt and fabric then cut out with pinking shears. Finally we adhered the birds with mod podge and the wings & button eyes with glue (the photos were taken while the glue was still wet so they look white but will dry clear). I am sure there were a lot of happy moms that week!
Some days I feel like I have the best job ever, and yesterday was one of them. We did the most fabulous giraffe paintings in my class.
Here is my video lesson on YouTube:
We used 8" x 24" wood boards as our "canvas". I had the kids squirt 3 or 4 colors of paint straight onto their boards and blend it with a sponge brush. Then we practiced drawing our giraffe faces. Drawing them with the ears coming straight out from the eyes made it really easy for the kids to grasp and they were able to sketch them with no problem. I had them use chalk to draw out their giraffes on the boards (so they could wipe mistakes off easily) and then let them loose with colored pencils, paint and oil pastels to create their own unique giraffe.
We haven't done a whole lot of totally freestyle projects in class. Most of the time I do step by step processes with them to teach techniques and such. So this was a little frightening for some of the kids at first. I showed them how to do sgraffito (where they lay on paint and then use a pencil to scratch off a design), and encouraged them to do lots of layering. I had bubble wrap and other textured surfaces for them to use for printing. But mostly I just encouraged them to be creative, and before long they were totally engrossed in it. It was awesome! And the results were truly amazing...
