Saturday, July 31, 2010

Proud Painted Peacocks


I grew up just a couple miles from the Los Angeles Arboretum (located in Arcadia). It was home to a number of peacocks and peahen imported from India by a wealthy investor, Lucky Baldwin back in the 1880's. It was not uncommon for them to stray once in a while and end up in the backyards of friends. Looking back now, I have a much greater appreciation for being able to enjoy these gorgeous birds up close, roaming freely. A number of their offspring still remain and my daughter can now enjoy them as well.
To create our peacocks my K-2nd graders first painted their board with a mix of tropical blue and green. After our base had dried, the children followed a simple direct line drawing of a close-up bird: bowling pin shape body with a skinny oval behind it. The feathers were painted in layers: yellow, orange, green and "peacock" blue. The feathers were connected to the body using oil pastels. Finally, beaks, eyes and head feathers were added using a combination of paint and oil pastel. This project was a favorite amongst my Animal Art Mini Campers.

2 comments:

  1. Mary, thanks for your comments on my blog. My warning about changing your blog, after this past few days - be careful about diving in and switching your template. Some of the templates (particularly the one called "awesome" it seems) available on the blogger template designer will not accept comments from anyone using safari as their browser. It took me like 3 days of playing with it to get it OK again, and that was only after having my son, using safari on his mac, repeatedly check it as I backed out of all the changes I'd made.

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  2. this is a really cool project! What beautiful results!

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