Wild for Wildsmith

(my experiment for the lesson)

I adore beautiful children's books and have even saved many of the ones from my childhood. Thanks for enrolling in The Weekly Reader Book Club back in the 70's Mom! I'm still treasuring Andrew Henry's Meadow, The Flying Hockey Stick, The Little House and many more.

So this lesson was inspired by the gorgeous illustrations of Brian Wildsmith in the classic fable, "The Hare and The Tortoise." The children dry brushed their rabbit first with acrylics and were encouraged to add texture with small brushes and acrylic and/or oil pastel. This group (6-9 yr olds) seemed to have a definite idea about how their rabbits should look, so some opted out of this step. They then chose between a warm or cool background. What I love most about Wildsmith's work is his layers of colors and texture. So they then layed down oil pastel stems and leaves in a variety of colors, followed by printed stems of acrylic using cardboard sides and circles using old marker caps. They could even add an extra layer of splatter painting if they chose. This was definitely not a lesson of less is more. I would like to do this again and bring in even more layering - it was a very fun piece to create.