Have you seen the free how-to-draw videos from Shoo Rayner? He just posted a Mayflower drawing video which would be great for middle and high school. I love how he shows the whole drawing process, from a light pencil sketch to a finished pen drawing.
Shoo has lots of other fabulous drawing videos. If you have students who love to draw (and parents who allow them to access YouTube), please let them know about these fabulous videos. They will stay very busy over the winter break!
Enjoy!
If you are looking for a super-successful step-by-step Mayflower drawing, head right over to Art Projects for Kids. I downloaded Kathy Barbro’s excellent instructions and taught the lesson to our third graders. Result: 100% success!!!! CLICK HERE for the instructions.
Materials:
I absolutely love Crayola Color Sticks for this project. The white sails really stands out on the light brown paper. Kids can layer colors, or create bright solid color areas using heavy hand pressure.
Have a happy holiday!
Enjoy!
If you are looking for a whole-class art project, artprojectsforkids.org also has nice downloadable murals for all the holidays.
Fourth grade just finished their Seurat pointillism art project. Our students used pan watercolors, Q-tips and markers to make pointillist food! The project was inspired by this project by Jessica Young at Miss Young’s Artroom.
I passed out pointillist notecards and magnifying loups (borrowed from our science lab). It was a lot of fun to see the dots up close.
Next we watched the first half of an AMAZING video: ‘Get to the Point’ – Georges Seurat and Pointillism by Artrageous with Nate.
Finally we completed a color mixing worksheet, using marker dots to make the secondary colors.
Homemade pointillist worksheet
Students selected a food reference photo, then lightly sketched their basic food shapes on paper. They had the option of using Q-tip or marker to dot their papers.
(warning: we discovered you can’t erase pencil lines after they’ve been painted with pan watercolor. Remind kids to draw lightly!)
Students erased their pencil lines from last week, then added MORE DOTS! Some students added a background – a couple even added pointillist borders.
This was a VERY popular and successful project! I will definitely repeat. Are looking for a group pointillism project? Please check out my earlier post for a Seurat mural.
Here’s the cool pointillism video by Artrageous with Nate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfALDoLHqU0
This is the first project of our food art series, in honor of the FEAST! exhibit at San Diego’s New Children’s Museum. This year we will be making food art projects at each grade level.
Do you have a favorite food art project?
Dale Chihuly is an American artist known for his fanciful, organic-shaped glass sculptures. Here is a group art project inspired by Chihuly’s ceiling installation at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Our project turned out so well I installed it on my art room ceiling!
Students colored their coffee filters with Crayola markers. We did a quick review of the color wheel before coloring: students should select analogous colors, or use warm or cool color combinations. Avoid complementary color choices – the colors will muddy when sprayed.
Students DO NOT have to color every inch of the coffee filter! Leave some white space – the colors will run together when sprayed with starch.
Cover a table with newspaper. Set up old plastic tubs, bottles, etc. Invert coffee filter over the tubs and spray with spray starch. The colors will run and blend. Let dry over night.
Hot glue the flat bottoms of the dry coffee filters to a sheet of tag board. I punched holes around the edge of the tag board, and used T-pins to pin the artwork into my acoustic ceiling tiles.
(Guess what? My ‘Bellagio’ ceiling didn’t set off the motion sensor alarm. Hurray!)
This project was inspired by one of the many projects in the Chihuly unit from Nashville public schools.
The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis has an extensive virtual glassblowing interactive for kids.
Watch a variety of Chihuly videos on Yahoo Screen.
Check out my earlier post for a 30-minute group art chandelier.
Enjoy!
Dale Chihuly makes fantastic, organic-shaped glass sculptures. They are in collections all over the world. This summer I saw the Chihuly chandelier at San Diego’s Mingei International Museum and participated in a group art project taught by art educator Jackie Hwang.
Jackie photocopied a spiral onto overhead transparencies. She made two sizes of spirals – a full sheet size, and a half sheet size containing two spirals.
Families colored the spirals and cut them out, then turned them in to Jackie for assembly. Coloring time depended on the complexity of the design (but took FAR less than 30 minutes).
UPDATE: carefully punch each spiral on the tiny dot at the center of each spiral.
UPDATE: OPTIONAL: You may experiment with smearing the spirals with a cotton ball lightly dampened with rubbing alcohol. This will cause the colored sharpie to smear and blend. It’s a different look, and it takes extra time. Totally optional!
Jackie created the chandelier form using a mix of the large and small spirals. She used a couple of pipe cleaners to suspend the spiral clusters.
Jackie’s project is perfect for grades K-6. It would be super for art teachers on a cart, or art teachers that teach at multiple schools. You could fit the photocopied transparencies and all the other materials you need for this project in a tote bag.
Here is a 4-minute video of Dale Chihuly from the CBS morning show
Coming up in the next post: two more Chihuly-inspired projects.
What’s your favorite Chihuly project?
