enlarged animal eyes

The elementary class just finished these amazing acrylic paintings of animal eyes.

The project goal was to teach them how to use a grid to enlarge a reference picture from a small size onto their painting paper.

We took a square piece of 10x10 acrylic paper and a 4x4 reference picture of an eye and divided each into equal squares. Then starting with one square at a time, the students painted what they saw. Each child caught on very quickly and the results are lovely.

The artist were all given just primary colors along with black and white and mixed everything themselves. When finished I handed out some charcoal for them to finesse any lines they wanted to add that were to fine for a paintbrush.

8 year old

7 year old

8 year old

9 year old

8 year old

6 year old

7 year old

painting pears

A few years ago, I found this exercise on Pinterest.

I actually had a preteen student create an artwork using the instructions back then too. She had a great time making the work and I put the project on file for later use.

Well this December did I ever put it to use! Every single class and age group did a project inspired by this exercise.

And it was a successful project regardless of age too.

Each child started by creating a painting exercise using red, yellow and brown.

Then using what they learned in the exercise and picking what they liked best of their discoveries during it, each student created one larger painting. My goal was to give them the opportunity to explore value and brushstroke to create interest in their work.

 

This part of the project filled the entire hour and a half class. The following week when the students came back, they began again with their exercise paper and applied colors of their choice over the underpainting.

8 year old

Then again looking over their exercise sheet, made choices of what they wanted to carry forward on their final work of art. 

9 year old

And what stunning works of art they were too! These two large canvases were created by elementary students.

8 year old wip

The above elementary student finished his work but something about it wasn't just right to him at the end of class. I told him to go ahead and take it home, live it awhile and if he still felt the same way the next week to come early to the studio and redo what he didn't like. 

The great part of this was that he had already learned that adding another layer of color was no big deal and before his classmates arrived had created a work of art that he was happy with in the end.  (If you are curious, you can see the silk mounted on frame in the background for the new silk painting project they were about to start)

8 year old finished work

The pre-teen class worked on a smaller canvas. Why different size canvases for different classes? Because I had a lot of leftover canvases sitting around the studio that I decided to use up. They were solely picked based on me having the correct amount of one size for the correct amount of students enrolled in the class.

Again the artist could choose whatever color combination they wanted and apply the skills they learned during the warm up exercise on the small paper.

10 year old

11 year old

11 year old

11 year old

And the teen class completed these works using a square piece of acrylic paper.

And because I was on a roll with pear projects, the fun carried over into the drawing class too! Here are a couple of the drawings I captured on film.

10 year old

9  year old

Lots was learned about the importance of value and brushstroke. Lots of beautiful pieces of art! And lots of very proud and happy kids of all ages. I'll put that down as a win.

silk painting on scarves and canvas

No Holiday Workshop week would be complete without the traditional painted silk scarves day for children to create wearable works of art for loved ones.

The kids love it. The families love it. And some lucky soul's name is on a priceless gift sitting under the tree.

IF the child can stand to wait that long to give the scarf to the new owner! I have gotten countless emails over the years from parents who not only thank me for giving their child the opportunity to create something so wonderful but also to let me know their child was so excited to give the gift they could not wait until the holiday rolled around.

And isn't that what the holiday season is all about? The wonders of giving rather than receiving? I am always thrilled to learn that this workshop played some small part in learning that valuable life lesson.

Children worked on these scarves right up until the end of the three hour workshop and all left with some marvelous works of art.

Again, I have to apologize for the pictures. I need a designated photographer to grab photos for me when doing workshops. I just always run out of time and am frantically shooting them as they walk out the door and hoping for the best.

There were of course, several versions of flowers created on the scarves. 

Along with seahorses, jelly fish and stars. This group covered from the bottom of the ocean to the heavens!

The below work was created by a five year old. Needless to say, she was exhausted at the end of three hours. She created quite a design to paint and announced at the end, "she probably would not be coming back". I love the honesty of children but do hope that she reconsiders. But more than anything, I hope once she got a nap under her belt and saw the reaction all her hard work garnered when the gift was open, she realizes it was worth it. I was very, very proud of her for completing something like this at her age. I fully expected a much simpler design from her and was so impressed to see her focus as long as she did on something of this size.

This scarf was so interesting to look at, the artist created a design that included every member of her family, along with every single color of dye and a variety of different images ranging from hearts, candy canes, flowers and stars. She simply began drawing freehand on the scarf and came up with the most interesting piece. It had an almost graffiti nature to it and was quite arresting when finished. I was quite excited as it was one of those moments as a teacher you get to enjoy observing a child completely lost in the joy of the process of creating art rather than worrying about the final product.

And right before the after school art classes broke for break, some of the students tried their hand at silk painting that I then applied to canvas for them.

Here are a few of the completed works. I love using the silk this way as they make beautiful framed pieces. Aren't these amazing?

I did this project with a couple of the classes and would love to present them all. Trust me when I say they were all equally as wonderful. 

I think if kids had their way, we would do a silk painted project once a month. It is always a very popular project with all age groups as they explore the unusual art form.