favorite things mixed media

I was sad to see the 4/5 year old class end.

These two kiddos are so fun to work with and charm the pants off of me each week.

For the last project, I decided to create a mixed media work that I could build upon to keep them engaged for the hour class.

We started with a blind contour drawing of their very favorite animal.

Then I let them each take a fat water-soluble graphite and spend time adding any details they wanted to their drawing to make their animals really come to life.

Once they had finished I gave them a paint brush and a bowl of water and asked them to do over their drawings and tell me what happened.

Were they ever surprised to see the pencil marks start to become grey paint.

When they were tired of that, I asked each of them to tell me their favorite color and gave them a bit of liquid watercolor to paint the backgrounds of their pictures.

For fun I had them try blooming and allowed them to add salt then let them watch what happened. I'm not sure what they enjoyed more, flicking water on the painting or adding the salt.

I then quickly dried their works with a blowdryer and handed them a fountain pen and black ink. They truly enjoyed using the pens, just like every. other. child. who has ever played with them.

Then I put out some chalk and oil pastel for them to put any final touches on their mixed media project of their favorite things.

At the end of class, one child had created a picture of her favorite animal, a horse, using her favorite color, blue.

No surprise there as every lesson she wants to draw a horse and asks for blue paint.

4 year old, "Oceania, the horse" mixed media

I also wasn't surprised to learn the other child wanted to focus on a fox for their favorite animal. The fox has been showing up quite a bit lately in his artwork.

5 year old, "Foxy Phillipe" mixed media

For fun I had them title their artworks at the end of class. And once again, the pants were charmed right off of me.

Hope these two have a wonderful summer holiday.