Ezine Blogs: crayon.

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Faux Stained Glass

First I found a stained glass coloring page- a very simple oval one. Then we cut up each section of the oval into five or six smaller irregular pieces. This first "stained glass" piece was accomplished by using Prismacolor markers on regular copy paper. The ink bled through heavily. So what we are seeing is actually the back side of the paper. There are little bits of white that resemble some of the frosting you see on traditional stained glass. After that was attached to black paper with glue and allowed to dry. The "leading" was traced over with black glue. Black glue is regular white school glue with just a little black acrylic paint mixed in. It dries with a raised surface. This one turned out very pretty.

This is another simple coloring page sans the extra sections but with a dove added. This is crayon on wax paper. Again the leading is black glue and the frame is two pieces of black construction paper with the oval center cut out. This one would make a really nice sun catcher displayed on a window.

Greek Vases

Scratch projects really have limitless possibilities. Vases are a huge part of the ancient history of Greece. They served not only an aesthetic purpose, but a functional one as well.
Different shapes had different names and
were used for different purposes.
You can learn more about those different names and purposes at this link. It also explores the different periods of Greek Pottery and how it changed from age to age.
Greek Vases Part I- Through the Ages
Greek Vases II-Shape Names and Purposes

Here is another project that is perfect for this technique. You can also play around a bit with the mediums. Oil pastel and crayon are generally what you use for these, but you can color with marker or watercolor then "seal" the color with a heavy coat of white crayon or oil pastel. Just be careful to avoid using dark colors like brown or gray as they don't show through the black very well.

1. In order to achieve a vase with symmetrical sides, start by folding a piece of cardstock down the middle vertically. Draw only half of the vase on one side. I did it in pencil first and then retraced in a heavy layer of black oil pastel.

2. Fold the paper over with the black lines on top of the blank side and then use a lidded marker to rub over the lines you just traced.

3. When you open the paper back up the vase half should
transfer to the other side in a perfect mirror image
creating a perfectly symmetrical vase.
You can then color with crayon, oil pastel, marker, or other paint. If you use paint, make sure you wait for it to completely dry before adding the layer of white to seal the color.
Once the color is done and sealed add a layer of black crayon or oil pastel.
If you use crayon you will need to use heavier pressure
than with oil pastel.
Once the black is on in an even layer, use a wooden skewer or unbent paper clip to "scratch" off the black in different line patterns to reveal the colors underneath.

Giraffe Scratch

Jimmie inspired me to do this lesson which though super simple, can get a little messy. But the amount of fun you have is directly indicated by the amount of mess left behind, right? So here is a fun giraffe project!

You will need:

pencil
cardstock(the smooth surface works best for this type of project)
crayons or oil pastels
wooden skewer(shiskkabob stick) or unbent paper clip

1. Draw the giraffe in pencil according to the steps below. When finished, outline in sharpie and
erase any extra pencil marks you don't want.

2. Color with crayon or oil pastel with firm enough pressure to create an even surface- white is the enemy! Vanquish it!
(if there are areas you want to stay white, color them in with white- there needs to be two layers of materials for this to work properly)
Be creative with your colors! If you want a blue giraffe with orange spots then go for it!

3. Here comes the scary part! Once the paper is completely covered with color, add a layer of black over the entire picture! Again you will have to use a firm pressure, but you should still be able to see the design through the black.

4. Use the skewer or paper clip to "scratch" off the black. Try to scratch in different patterns to add more texture and visual interest!
(this is where things get really messy with scratched off crayon or pastel bits, you will want to cover your area or work outside.)
Clean up can usually be accomplished pretty easy from hard surfaces with baby wipes and or hand sanitizer- the alcohol breaks down the oil.

To see another project done in this technique,
check out Art Projects for Kids scratch turkey.

Another variation of this project can be done
with colored glue and chalk pastel.

For a thorough tutorial on the process
check out That Artist Woman-Stained Glass on Paper.

While you are busy making giraffes, you can learn about them too with these very interesting giraffe facts at Buzzle.com

Klee's Castle

I really love the work of Paul Klee, if nothing else for the fact that his work has the childlike purity and joy to it. He also loved drawing cats when he was young and since feline appreciation runs deep in our house, it is all the more reason to love him!
My seven year old son draws cats all the time and would love to have one, but alas the great irony is that he is allergic to them!!!
So rather than cats, we will look at his castles! The projects below are based on these pieces above in his castle series. Don't they look like building blocks?

Well our projects were made with building blocks- of the cardstock template kind. Below you will find a PDF template you can print out to help in making these projects.

First we traced the shapes with pencil as we "built" our castles
from the bottom up.
We made sure to leave enough room for a sun in the sky-
just like Klee did.
The we outlined first in metallic marker and then
colored in with oil pastel.

My sample

By Anna Age 9

Why not make a standing castle city where you can host your own jousting tournaments?
Just build your castles on paper bags and then
they can stand all by themselves.
Be sure to build them on the smooth side of the bag
without the bottom paper fold-
that way your bag will lay flat while you are building it.

How big will your castle city be?

I used pencil and crayon for these.

My castle city is still under construction...

Shape Templates Castle

Publish at Scribd or explore others:

The circle that intersects the large rectangle will give you two semi-circles
and create the archway block

These projects were inspired by these projects at Art Projects for Kids
Castle 1
Castle 2

Hoppin Down the Bunny Trail...

What in the world do the Easter Bunny and Cubism have in common?
Really not much at all except that I chose Fernand Leger to be my Artist of the Week in art class and it is also two days until Easter, so I chose to do a bunny in a cubist style.

What you will need
Paper
pencil
oil pastels or crayons
oval template

1. Start with a simple bunny drawing. You can follow these steps or create your own. I gave students an oval shape to create the head in the first step. It really had two purposes, one was to keep everyone in the same type of proportions and the second is that it will be used in the the second part of the project.

2.At this point, you will want to outline the pencil lines in a blue or purple marker. Black will be too harsh and just leaving the pencil may be confusing in the next step.

3. Take the egg and trace it over and over again all over the paper. Make sure to make lots of overlaps and intersections, but try not to make too many very small spaces.
Try to let some of the oval shapes run off the page as well

You will now be coloring the areas created by the intersecting egg shapes. You have a choice of using a very limited color palette or using as many colors as you can think of! How you color is key though. Use heavier pressure near the edges of one or two sides of the shapes- not all around. Let the other side get lighter and keep the sides fairly consistent with the pressure- if you start with heavy pressure on the left side and bottom of a shape, continue to do with most of the shapes. You can change here and there, but the consistency is what will really give you the effect we want.

Another Variation...

Add a layer of black oil pastel and then scratch off areas to make lighter and darker values as well as creating texture.

Student Examples

By Taylor- Age 10

By Ryan -Age 7

Have a Great Easter!

Monsters and Aliens

"The Forty Dot Monster"

We started by placing 40 dots on a large (18 x 24") piece of paper.
We then connected all the dots and looked at it for a
few minutes to determine what kind of monster was
hiding in that form. We then added details like eyes,
skin and scale patterns
and a extra limb here
or there
to balance things out. We then traced in black sharpie
and colored in oil pastel. When it was done we
cut it out and mounted it on a large piece of colored
construction paper.

*Editor's Note- The idea for this project was found at here at Teach Kids Art

"Miss Julie"

Now meet the name aliens. I originally saw this project over at Art Projects for Kids. It has become a favorite of my son's. It only takes a few little tweaks to end up with a totally different alien each time. These were done in marker as was the one at Art Projects, but I have found the procedure to much easier to do with crayon.

Start out by folding your paper in half. Sign your name in pencil as large as you can while still getting all the letters of your name. (You can print or use all capitals-hence the tweaks I mentioned- but it is important to connect all the letters.) When you are happy with it color over all the lines very heavily with crayon- a darker color like blue, purple, brown, or black will work best. Then close up the paper on the fold and use a tool(we used a marker with the lid on) to apply very firm pressure over all the crayon lines. It is best to make sure you are working on the back side of where you applied the crayon. This will transfer the lines to the other side to create a mirror image. Darken up the lines and decide what kind of alien is hiding in your name. Decide where the top and bottom are and add all the details!

These would be great activities to do after you see the new Disney /Pixar film Monsters vs. Aliens or as we know will happen soon- ALIEN AND MONSTER BIRTHDAY PARTIES!

"Taylor"

"Ryan"

*Editor's Note- The idea for this project was found at here at Teach Kids Art

St. Patrick and More Shamrocks: Scratches and Rainbows

St. Patrick was actually an English citizen who was captured by slave traders and sold as a slave in Ireland. For many years he worked in the fields as a shepherd. This gave him a lot of time to think, especially about God and His plan for Patrick's life. After many years, Patrick felt God was telling him to return to England. After a harrowing journey filled with miracles, Patrick made it back home to England and to a family who had long believed him to be dead or lost forever. It was after this that Patrick became a priest rising in the ranks to become a bishop. Patrick began to hear God's call once again urging him to return to England to share the good news of the gospel with the mostly druid and pagan tribes of Ireland, the place of his long enslavement. Having been among them for so long, Patrick had an intimate knowledge of the Irish people that many others would not have had. He did return and many miracles have since been attributed to him, including driving all the snakes out of Ireland. To this day, Ireland does not have any snakes.

He also used the shamrock or "three-leaved clover" to help explain the idea of the trinity to his Irish parishioners, which is why we often use the shamrock to symbolize this special day.

Links to help you learn more...

Alphabet Soup

Enchanted Learning

Wikipedia

Shamrock Scratch(Art Project)

What you will need:

White paper(preferably cardstock)

Colored construction paper for the frame- your choice

scissors

crayons- shades of green and black

brass fasteners(also known as brads, or use a skewer or paper clip)

1. Fold paper into eighths
2. Draw half a heart on the fold
3. Cut through all layers
4. Should produce 4 symmetrical hearts

5. Color three of the hearts with shades of green. Color with a lot of pressure.
6. Color a second heavy layer of black.
7. "Scratch" designs on the black layer with a scratch tool-
(Brass fastener, skewer, or paper clip)

8. Arrange in the shape of shamrock and glue down
9. Add a stem
10. Add a background (perhaps a rainbow?)

Go to this link to make a FUN PAPER FRAME

HAVE A GREAT ST.PATRICK'S DAY!

Sitting under the tree with Gustav- not K-I-S-S-I-N-G: an art lesson focusing on Gustav Klimt.

Again, I am bringing out "the best of" anthology...

I have been checking my friends blogs and lamenting that they have not posted in a few days. Then as I was updating my blog, I realized it has been more than a week since I've written anything either. Summer is almost over and as usual, most of my grand intentions for all my free time went unfulfilled. Of course I did do some things that I hadn't planned to do as well and am better for it.
I have had a great time with my art classes this summer though, and here is our latest project.
This past week we learned about Austrian artist Gustav Klimt. If you know Klimt's work, you may think that not an appropriate choice for a kids class. For the most part, I would agree, but he does have several family friendly pieces and his contribution to the art world is still significant. Not to mention he is one of my favorite artists. Though his life was not one we Christians can admire for his high morals, he had few, his work is still exceptionally beautiful. He used a lot of gold in his paintings, being the son of an engraver helped him to become an expert at the gold leaf process.
For this project you will need examples of Klimt's work. Allposters.com is a good resource. There is even a children's book called Klimt and His Cat by Berenice Capatti and illustrated by Octavia Monaco.

The narrator is the cat and Klimt's world is seen through its eyes. It is in no way a complete biography but it is a kid-friendly way to introduce this particularly controversial artist. There is some nudity in the book, so be prepared. I take no shame in my censorship and placed post it notes over questionable images. I also did not let kids view the book on their own so they could not "peek".

Materials needed:
Print or photo of Gustav Klimt's "The tree of life".

Metallic gel markers (we used Prang, purchased at WalMart)
Black or other dark toned paper (pastel paper would be good, but I used scrapbook paper)
oil pastels(brown and black)

1. Have kids decide whether their composition will be vertical or horizontal.

2. Once they decide this then they should find the middle of their page on the bottom edge. Just to the left of this have them draw a curved line with a metallic gold or silver marker that starts at the bottom edge of the page and ends in a spiral. Have them move to the right a bit and repeat this curve in the opposite direction, still ending in a spiral.

3. In the middle of these two curves they should draw a "V" shape. This will create a tree trunk.

4. Now the kids get to make their tree grow. Continue to have them add spiral branches, some growing from the first spirals moving outward and some moving upward until they have just about filled the page. Encourage kids to make some spirals larger and some smaller, some going right and some left. Hopefully they will leave some room though as there are lots more details to add.

(note)There is a lot of detail to this project, so younger kids or ones who aren't into art that much may benefit from breaking this project up into 2 or 3 shorter sessions instead of one long one.

5.Have the kids fill in the tree trunk and then thicken some of the branches on the curves only. The actual spirals probably won't need to be thickened.

6. At this point the kids should add a horizon line. Have them draw a line from the right side of the trunk to the edge of the page and repeat on the left.

7. At this point have them draw in pink and purple flowers with green stems. They may add as many or as few as they like and they should be on the ground and in the tree.

8. Next they will add green triangles, stars(any color), circles, and dots. All these shapes look better when they are done in a grouping and not just by themselves randomly scattered. The dots especially look nice if they follow along the edges of the spirals. Then have them add green and blue swirls on the ground in between the flowers. Encourage variety in sizes, making some bigger and some smaller.

9. At this point have the kids start putting black and brown rectangles on the tree trunk and thicker branches of the tree. They can also add some gold or silver rectangles here depending on whether they started with gold or silver. Again encourage variety in the rectangle pattern. Some should be vertical, some horizontal, some filled in, some empty. The cloak of the male figure in Klimt's "The Kiss" is a good example of this.