“Wild Thing” Watercolor Monster

Maurice Sendak's book "Where the Wild Things Are" is a natural intro to this project.
1. I recommend using large (15" x 22") watercolor paper as it helps the students make generous shapes that are really vivid when later painted. Drawing paper will look pale and curl up - trust me I found out the hard way! Have the students mark with a pencil the center of the paper, and then draw a circle from that which fills the top half of the paper. Explain that the students will be drawing a monster of their creation, but it must have a large head like those shown in the Sendak book.
2. Next, they should draw a body under the head. Legs and arms are to be added, along with a silly face. Lastly, details such as clothing lines and circles are drawn. Give each student a permanent black marker and ask them to trace all the pencil lines.
3. Distribute watercolor paint that is made from tablets that have been dissolved in spill-proof cups. Ask the students to paint in all the shapes they have drawn, including the background. This monster was created last year by a 1st grader.

Starry City Night

Vincent Van Gogh's “Starry Night” painting has inspired many an art project, and this is just one more.

1. Distribute 9" x 12" watercolor paper, and ask students to make several large yellow oil pastel circles of various sizes in the top half. Next they are to draw with a blue oil pastel lots of curvy lines that go around all the yellow circles.
2. Give the students blue liquid watercolor paint and have them “wash” the entire paper with the blue paint.
3. Each student is to take a 6" x 12" sheet of black paper, and with a white oil pastel, draw a sky line that stairsteps up and down to make a building silhouette. (Make sure that the skyline is drawn horizontally and not vertically to match the watercolor paper.) Lots of details should be added, like windows and doors.
4. Lastly, the black silhouette should be cut out and glued to the sky background.

Glue and Pastel Landscape

Kids are SO lucky that new art supplies seem to constantly show up in stores these days. In my day, just having a 64-box set of crayons meant you were decked out.

1. I used Art Stix from Prismacolor for this picture, but any chalk pastel would work too. However, if your kids are squeemish about chalk texture, try these new Stix as they have none of that quality but all of the color. Give each student a piece of black construction paper. Have them draw, in pencil, a very simple landscape with hills, water, sun and possibly mountains.
2. When the drawing is complete, they are to trace all the lines with white glue squeezed from a bottle. Don't worry about wobbles, they end up looking nice and 'hand made' I think. Just try to not make huge puddles. Let the glue dry at least a day.
3. With either the chalk pastels or Art Stix, instruct the students to use at least two colors in each section of the picture. For example, dark and light blue for the water, dark and light green for the grass, etc. This will give the artwork some shading and depth and add a lot more interest to their work.

Art Journaling 124

A simple stamping project worked really well in my afterschool art journal class today. The theme was “Circles”, which some kids turned into faces, some into flowers, and some into sports images, as in this example.
1. I had saved all the center cardboard rolls from my paper towels for quite some time, and found they were the perfect disposable tool to do some quick printmaking. The students dipped them in about 1/2" of liquid watercolor, and did some repeated stamping onto their papers. When the page was full, they gently placed a paper towel on top to soak up extra paint.
2. The paper dries pretty quickly, so I passed out pencil crayons and told them to just be creative with coloring them in. One student even made what looked like a really beautiful wedding ring quilt pattern by overlapping all her circles. Love their creative minds!

Spheres in Space

Learning how to turn a circle into a sphere can be lots of fun if you use an outer space theme.

1. Die cut presses and heavy mat board were invaluable for making quick circle templates. I created 2" and 3" templates with circles cut out of the middle so students could easily see and trace five to seven 3" circles in pencil on a black sheet of paper. Encourage students to draw some circles that go off the paper to add more interest.
2. Using chalk pastels, each circle is to be colored in with one main color.
3. Explain briefly the idea that there is a source of light (like a big sun) shining on these planets. The students need to decide where their sun is in relationship to their planets. If the sun is off the page to the right, as on this example, they should use a white chalk pastel and color a curved shape on the right side of the circle. Then an opposite black shadow curve needs to go on the opposite side. After coloring as shown in the diagram, show the students how to blend the edges together. There should be no hard edge between the colors when they are done. 4. Oval rings and tiny stars may be added as a final step.
CA Visual Art Standard: Creative Expression, Grade Four
2.1 Use shading (value) to transform a two-dimensional shape into what appears to be a three-dimensional form (e.g., circle to sphere).