What a rainy day! - Art lesson on splatter painting techniques

It was the month of rains and it was raining cats and dogs here as usual.
Kids are happy with rain if only you let them play in it, just like me:-)
With rain pushing them indoor, kids came into the class with a 'not so good' mood.
So we decided we had to play in rain.
If not rain water, why cant we play in rain of pain? And thus we went with this rainy day lesson plan.

What we need:

Art block
water colors
pencil
lots of tissues and plastic wraps to cover all around the kids.
old tooth brush

How we did:

I ask the kids to draw themselves, imagining that they are standing in rain.

One genius came up promptly with an answer - My mom wont allow me to stand in rain.
I said "What if you can carry an umbrella?"

So the kids drew themselves holding an umbrella on the page.

Drawing everything from their imagination.

Once done, we outline them all in marker and color them using oil pastels/water colors.

Kids then used their pencil box to cover the drawing of them and the umbrella.

Now is the fun part!.

We mixed many colors in diluted form and kept in trays.

Kids dabbed at them with the tooth brush and flicked at the bristles onto the paper to make splatter effect.
Using a pencil held on the left hand, the brush loaded with watered down paint on the other,tap the brush on pencil splattering heavy and interesting drops onto the paper.

After having enough splatters on the rainy day project we kept it aside, but kids still wanted to do play with paint rain - so we went splattering on plain sheets of paper until the end of the class.

What kids learnt:

Two different techniques and how to have fun with art

what I learnt:

Do not indulge on a spontaneous lesson plan such as this without due preparation.
Happy kids - Poor walls. ;-(

Random picks:

See you soon,

Sunset Painting - Blending with paint

This was a simple sunset art lesson - a practice for blending colors in paint.

What we need:

Art block
poster colors

How we did:

Kids first draw the outline of whatever monument they wanted the sunset silhouette to be.

Only outline is enough, no details since it is all going to be black.

Now we start painting straightaway.

Start painting with the lightest color - yellow from the bottom of the page not much care if it went inside the sketching, till you reach one third of the page width.
Now Start the second color - orange. Start painting while the yellow is till wet, slowly blending the edges of the yellow into the orange. continue orange till three forth of the page and then switch to the last color red. Blend in the same way.
You can also blend the edges of two colors later with just water in the brush

Last step is to color in the foreground silhouette in all black, after the backdrop if totally dry.

Random picks:

See you soon.

Warm and Cold Sun

Drawing or painting a sun is always fun for kids.

So teaching them warm and cold colors using a sun is  very simple yet fun for both kids and me.

What we need:

Art block
oil pastels

How we do it:

Simply draw a big circle for the sun in the center of the page(landscape orientation)

Divide hid face into two by a straight line.

Draw as many as big fat squiggly hands(kids term for rays) for him on both sides, one side rays may be wiggly other side may be spikes.

Make cute eyes and smiling mouth

Outline them with marker

Color one side of the sun with cool colors and other side with warm colors.

Use opposite colors for background, cool side of the sun should have warm background and so on.

What we learn:

All about warm and cool colors and how they give the feelings of warmth and cold when looked at.
The beauty of complimentary colors.

Random picks:

See you soon

Little Birdie..- Alphabet Art

Birds are always fascinating for all especially the kids.

This little birdie lesson was designed for in very simple instructions easy enough to be followed by the little ones.

What we need:

Art block
pencil n eraser
water color/colored pencils/ oil pastels

How we did 

Drawing:

1. As always we try to use alphabets for the smaller kids to learn drawing. We started off with a simple huge  'C' on the center of the page.
2. Erasing a little bit on the top curve we connected the ends of the 'C' with a slanting line and went little beyond the 'C' making the tail.make another soft line from the 'C' and connect it with tip of the tail feather.
3. Another 'C' along the back line makes the feathers.
4. Turn the paper and draw a cute little 'V' for the beak
5. Now draw two 'U's for the legs.
6. Finish the claws with inverted 'V'
7. Draw two curved lines in little distance for the branch where the birdie's little claws are clutching.
8. Draw the neckline and head patch if you want and finish it with two cute little concentric circles for the eyes.

Coloring:

Kids generally use their choice of colors although I stress a little to impose a color scheme in it.
Little ones are encouraged to use primary/secondary colors or complimentary colors.

Random picks:

 


See you soon,

Drawing the hibiscus

This was a pretty straight forward and simple lesson comfortable for small kids.

A very easy to follow instructions made all tiny tots draw and color the beautiful big flower with so much confidence.

What we need:

Art block
Poster colors/ water colors
Crayons

How we did:

Drawing:

1. Make a dot in the center of the page.
2. Draw a huge 'V' spreading out from the dot.
3. Draw another V vertically down/ turn the paper and draw a 'V'.
4. Draw a line between the two Vs. Now we have a basic five lined flower skeleton.
5. Once again we went drawing smaller Vs on each end of the line .
6. Connect the Vs with wiggly lines.
7. Draw two curved line for the pistil.
8. Draw the stem and leaves(simple leaf shape for little ones)

Coloring:

Use a yellow crayon or pastel to shade out from the center of the flower.
Use brown/orange crayon for the pistil and dots for the stigma

Use read poster color for the entire flower, the yellow shading and the pistil are safely done with crayons.
Green for leaves and stem and light blue for the background.

What we learnt:

We refreshed our memories about primary colors and drawing using alphabets.

Random Picks:

see you soon

Scream Art

The Scream - Edward Munch

When I was looking for a unique artist appreciation lesson, (I had decided to do the spooky
 'The scream' painting of Artist Edward Munch), I stumbled upon this picture.


 And I immediately knew I had to try this.
So much for the entertainment of the kids - this lesson proved to be a crowd pleaser at all times.

Kids will  absolutely love it.

What you need:

Art block
Liquid acrylics/poster colors/oil pastels
black marker
Straw

How to do:

Kids were told to draw a circle/oval for the face starting from the center of the paper down to the bottom.
The face was developed according to their taste. Some chose selfies while others went for creepy boys and clowns even.
The bust was done.
Everything was outlined with a sharpie as we always do with our projects.
Colored in with bright colors since we also wanted this to be more whimsical in nature than spooky.
Now comes the fun part - Each kid used a straw to dab the diluted colors and blow it on the paper starting from the head to the top of the page. The more you blow the more streaks. Kids had fun experimenting moving the paper, making branches and mixing colors while blowing.
At the end of session - we had a messy classroom full of grinning kids.

What we learned:

Before moving on to the project we had a visual of Edward Munch's The scream painting and discussed on his choice of colors and strokes. How the directional strokes and choice of colors can be manipulated to create mood.
How to create expressions in face.

Random picks:

see you soon

Color Garden

An easy and fun art project to teach primary, secondary and complimentary colors for the kids.

What was needed:

Art block

copy paper

water color/oil pastels

pencil & eraser

scissors 

glue

How we did it

1. We a painted paper(coloring the whole page) with single light color.

2. While it dried we sketched three circles on a copy paper. And in another, we drew three lines(using ruler) in equal distance dividing the paper into three sections.

3. We discussed about primary colors and what we might get when we mix primary colors with each other. Discuss how one color compliment each other(complimentary colors).

4. After some fun experimenting with color mixing, we filled in the circles with primary colors. 

Then on the the other paper we made secondary colors  - painting two primary colors on top of each other to make secondary colors- thus making three secondary colors.

5. We then cut the circles out.
6. Cut the secondary color rectangles, folded them into four and cut in shape of petals.

7. Now we went back to the art notebook. We glued each secondary color petals in one circle and the respective complimentary color circle as the center nectar area. We then drew and colored stems for the flowers.

Why we did it:

This simple color, cut and paste project teaches them all about primary secondary and complimentary colors in such an easy way.

Now whenever they forget a thing about color they know they can go to the color garden and check.

Here are few pictures from our students

 


See you soon with another simple and fun artwork.