Summer Art Camp Live on YouTube! Free Art Lessons!

Please join me on my YouTube channel this week for free online art lessons. I will be teaching live on my YouTube channel each day this week, June 6-10th, 2016 at 12 noon Central.  We will do a new project each day: Ice Cream Cone Drawings, Button Tree Paintings, Peacock Feather Zentangle Watercolors, Mixed Media Butterflies and Silly Giraffe Paintings. Lessons are recommended for ages 5 and up. Hope you can join me live to watch, chat and ask questions. The shows will be recorded and saved on my YouTube channel if you can't make the live stream. 

Follow the links view the videos live or watch the recordings after the shows. 

MONDAY: Ice Cream Cones

TUESDAY: Button Trees

WEDNESDAY: Peacock Feathers

THURSDAY: Butterflies

FRIDAY: Silly Giraffes

Materials List for the 5 projects:

Colored Pencils

Crayons and/or oil pastels, 

White or Colored Chalk, 

Acrylic Paints: Other colors

(white, red, yellow, blue, turquoise, green, orange, purple, pink, black, dark brown - whatever fun colors you like), 

Watercolor set

Black Sharpie (permanent) markers (fine & extra fine), 

Mod Podge or DecoPage

Scrapbook Papers 6"x6" Pad

Scissors

1" & 2" Foam Brushes

1/2" Flat Brush, 

1/4" Round Detail Brush, 

3 Canvas Panels (11"x14" or 12"x12") 

2  Watercolor or Mix Media Paper 9"x12"

Bubble wrap (or textured, patterned print-making objects), 

Buttons (various colors, 1or 2 dozen)

Thick craft glue or glue gun

Paper Towels

Water Jar (and water in a spray bottle if handy)

Freestyle Giraffes - Kid's Art Class

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...