Folk Art Neighborhoods

I loved this lesson that I saw at Lines, Dots and Doodles on Folk Art Neighborhoods. Her lesson was inspired by Karla Gerard-I just loved her artwork! It inspired me try it with my kids for some artwork for our playroom. We used acrylic paint and stretched canvas. Here's the play by play.

The small one on the top right was done by my 6 year old.

The bottom right was painted by my 9 year old. The larger left painting is mine. We had so much fun painting these!

Sun setting on summer

With the cool, crisp air making a surprise visit every now and then, I thought this lesson was a great way to say farewell to summer. I was inspired for this lesson my one of my favorite art lesson girls over at Mary Making. Here's my adaptation to Mary's lesson, Sailboat Collage.

First one hour session: Students used a 9 x 12 canvas board and acrylic paint with texture tool for the background. Lesson objective possibilities are introduction to landscape/horizon line, warm and cool colors, color mixing and texture. I focused mostly on landscapes and warm vs. cool colors. While paint was drying we pulled out some paper in various textures; some handmade, regular, watercolor, etc. We used liquid watercolors to mix and experiment. I put out different sized watercolor brushes, fresh water and spray bottles with a water/rubbing alcohol mix. Students absolutely loved this process.

Second one hour session: Decoupage glue and gold metallic watercolor liquid paint for accents. Students used painted paper and pre-cut stencil shapes and traced their boat parts, added gold highlights, and then after a quick drying time in front of a fan, glued together the collages. Lesson objective possibilities are introduction to watercolor, papers and mediums, collage, fine motor skills. These beautiful masterpieces were all done by 8 year old boys!

Painting without brushes

This is a simple, but fun lesson that I got from 123 I Can Paint, by Irene Luxbacher. This book has some excellent lessons for younger students. I use this specific lesson to teach primary and secondary colors, as well as complimentary colors. It takes about thirty minutes, but if you want to let them actually mix their own secondary colors, you can stretch it out a bit. It's a great time filler and easy enough for 3-5 year old students. You will need color construction paper or I like the color railroad board, tempera paint, paper towels and a lot of 3 x 3 (or various sized) cardboard squares. Place a small blob of paint to the far left side of the paper (as high up as you want your building to be). I always demo this process once for the students---with the cardboard square, have the students pull the paint downward, off the edge of the paper. I usually put the complimentary colors beside each other so I can introduce this concept. Repeat this process across your paper, varying the colors and the "heights" or placement of the paint blobs-they can even overlap some to add perspective. Next, do a black blob of paint at the bottom and pull it across horizontally to make the road. Now with a wadded up piece of paper towel and some white paint, dab some clouds across the sky-they can even go over the tops of some of the buildings to make the sky scrapers seem "in the clouds". With the end of a paint brush, I have the students use yellow or white paint to add windows to the buildings, black paint for birds in the sky, and yellow for the lines on the road.

Fall art classes

Fall art classes started in September and I can't believe it's already the middle of October. I have two classes, one after school and one homeschool class. The fall is flying by for me, as I'm sure it is for all of you! I havn't blogged in awhile and I've needed for awhile to get some of this spectacular art work up that my students have done. In my homeschool class we started off talking about lines, patterns and shapes in drawing. In our first project we used watercolor and oil pastels and the girls created some great roosters. Also in the homeschool class we have worked with pastels and learned about abstract landscapes and warm and cool colors. Last week we started our third project and are painting with acrylics and learning to mix our own colors. I love to try to post at least one pic of every student's work, but sometimes my pics just don't turn out....photography isn't my expertise, so sorry if your work is not featured this blog. We get it on here before the semester is over.