Festive Watercolor Bird

Recently I’ve been experimenting with having students start their paintings with watercolors and then adding details later.

1. I demonstrated how to start their bird paintings with a small circle for the head to one side of the paper and a curved body in the middle. Once filled in, some thick lines for tail feathers were added. To speed up the process, I gave each student a paper towel and had them blot their paintings dry. The colors will lighten up a bit but there's more color added later.
2. The students were given thin black oil pastels to trace their birds and add details.
3. I then had them go back to the watercolors to repaint the bodies and add opposing color the background to create a more vivid image.

Father’s Day Stamp Box

Father's Day art projects always seem harder to find for me than Mother's Day, but I like this simple stamp collage box project.

1. I wish I had a giant stamp collection to make art with, but in lieu of that I found some photography on the internet and made duplicate color prints. Print enough to have a dozen or so per student so they can pick and choose their favorite. I also purchased some of the simple wooden boxes available at Michael's, most of which cost about 99¢.

2. Have the students cut out the stamps they want very close to the edge.

3. I've found that the trick to decoupaging paper without any bubbles is to coat both sides with Mod Podge (meaning the box and the back of the stamp) and press together with a brush. Press firmly and coat the top of each stamp with Mod Podge too. Repeat until covered, taking care to wrap some around the edges to cover as much of the box as possible.

4. Let dry completely and finish with a final layer of Mod Podge.

Art Journaling 129

This is a mix and match collage project, with a writing prompt that hopefully sparks some creative thinking.

Prep Work: I’ve found that students can get easily distracted if you give them entire magazines to search through, so I tore out two sets of pages for them. One was just a collection of large faces, and the others had large swatches of color or pattern to use for the top of the head. Fashion magazines worked best for the first group and architecture or home decor for the second. Lastly, I cut the U-shaped faces and necks out of manila paper, and had writing paper cut to 6" x 9" for the background.
1. The students started with gluing the writing paper on the journal page, then gluing the manila face and neck on top.
2. The magazine pages with faces were passed out, with several for each student. They were asked to cut out and glue eyes and a mouth on their faces, hopefully each from a different magazine page.
3. The magazine pages with the patterns and color were passed out, with the instructions to cut amd glue some kind of hair or hat or topping to their collage head.
4. Using the lined paper, the students were asked to write and finish the sentence “Hello, my name is _____.”
This page was made by Ayala, a first grader, who happens to have beautiful head of red hair herself. I love it Ayala!

‘Ugly’ Paper Mache Monsters

This is a new project I just tried out with my afterschool paper mache class. It’s based on those super thick Capri juice boxes that I’ve been hoarding all year. I taped a pair together both side by side and on top of each other to give the students a choice of monster shapes to build on.
1. PREP WORK: Tape pairs of boxes together with packing tape, some on the wide side to make a long rectangle (left), and some on the thin side to make a large square (right). For the first class, the students use newspaper and mache to cover the boxes and hide any seams. Let dry until hard to the touch.
2. PREP WORK: Glue small plastic cups for eyes and legs with craft glue and let dry before next mache session. Note: plastic or styrofoam is better than paper as it doesn't “wilt” under the weight of too much mache. For class two, the students use large squares of paper towel with mache to cover roughly the bottom half of the monster. Let dry until hard to the touch.
3. PREP WORK: Cut curved ear shapes from large styrofoam cups and tape to top corners of the monster. For class, the students use paper towels again with mache to complete the top coverage of the monster. Let dry until hard to the touch.
4. Paint time! I like the inexpensive Michael’s brand of acrylic paints that come in really bright colors. I recommended to the kids that they paint a base color first and then add details on top. Let dry. To add a bit of shine at the end, a layer of Mod Podge could be added to the surface.

Thank you Ella (monster left) and Audrey (monster right) for letting me share your artwork. Can you believe they are both just in 1st grade?