African Elephants with Watercolor Sunsets

This "happy accident" created a wonderfully mysterious 'puff of smoke' in the distance.

My Experiment

I apologize for my long pause between blog posts. I've learned over the years that most parents aren't ready to commit to art classes until they have settled into their back-to-school schedules a bit. This is a busy sports time for many families (many of you can I'm sure appreciate this) with practice days for soccer, football, lacrosse. ect..I live across the street from a baseball field, and in the last few hours, I have seen all 3 sports come for practice.

These elephants were inspired by this piece I found via Pinterest. I had my students create the background first using wet-on-wet technique with liquid watercolors. I love watching children have fun with this and am totally game for them to experiment even if it means green in the sky. But of course we discuss what colors will create others. I gave them the option of continuing with watercolor to create their earth or switching to black acrylic to create a silhouette.

Next we got to work on our elephant profiles. These were created on brown grocery bags. I love using these for projects because their recycled quality make them a great base for certain animal skins. The children followed a direct line drawing lesson and traced their pencil work with Sharpie. I gave them brown and gray pastels for the elephant skin since African elephants give themselves dust baths to protect their skin from the sun. I encouraged them to use charcoal to add shadow in some of the major folds and wrinkles, as well as add definition. (We looked at real elephants so the kids could see just how wonderfully wrinkled these animals are.) They had the option of adding silhouettes of African umbrella trees or other animals or to keep the background as is. This is just a sampling from my K-4th grade groups.

 Age 5 - Beautiful!

Colorful Snakes and Koi Fish

I revisited a couple favorite lessons over the summer. The original post for these wrap around snakes can be found here. The children could choose from oil pastels, chalk pastels, acrylics and watercolors to add color to their compositions. Most opted for liquid watercolors. They do pack a colorful punch. The finishing touch of charcoal shadows really provides a 3D look to their twisted snakes. Artwork by K-4th graders.

This lesson was inspired by a great koi fish tutorial over at smART class. I tried it in the spring and decided to give it another go with a summer class. This is a favorite of the children as they feel so advanced after they've completed their drawings. Once again, liquid watercolors give their paintings their vibrant colors. Artwork by K-3rd graders.

Remembering 9/11

Remembering and honoring all those who lost their lives as well as the heroism that we witnessed that day and the days that followed

This piece was done several years ago by a student for an Eric Carle style cityscape

I immediately thought of the Twin Towers and it left a lump in my throat

Summer Remix

In case your were out in the sunshine, enjoying your summer with family and friends (and I hope you were!) here are some highlights from my summer art classes....

On a personal note, my son, Brandon graduated high school, my niece, Shaeye (who lives with us) is set to start her senior year in high school, and my daughter, Savannah was promoted from 5th grade and is ready to start middle school. Lots of milestones happening. It definitely feels strange to be "done" with elementary school! Time marches on...

Wishing you all a wonderful start to the new school year!

Mega Butterflies

For my last project of the summer, my "Creatures" groups created these over-sized butterflies in chalk pastel (with black oil pastel outlines). These were done on 18" X 24" black construction paper. Yup - really big! So in order for the kids to use the entire space, I told them to imagine these as monster butterflies. This was a good attention grabber and they all did a great job of filling the page. Back in art school, I had an illustration teacher who used to say, "When in doubt, blow it up and crop it." It is the easiest way to create an interesting composition when you feel stuck. And of course I had to throw in some comparisons to Georgia O'Keefe's flowers to which I was pleased to see many children nod their heads in agreement or understanding. The tables were filled with piles of chalk dust and of course the children's hands (and some faces) were stained and smudged as well. What a great note to end on ....I always tell the kids, it's not art class if you're not getting a little dirty. :)

Breaching Orcas

Last week was "Shark Week" on on the Discovery Channel. I actually entertained the idea of piggybacking on the theme and doing a shark project. A clearer mind prevailed and I came to my senses! We live at the beach and my students spend so much of their time in the ocean, that might not be the wisest choice for my "Creatures, Great and Small" classes. It's bad enough that our beach has been nicknamed, "Stingray Bay" due to the large number of them. Swimmers are even encouraged to do the "stingray shuffle", a shuffling of the feet to scare away these creatures.

So Orcas won out.(not exactly common in these parts) This was a fun straightforward project for my 2 groups of children, ages 5-10. Following a direct line drawing lesson, Orcas were painted with acrylic and then cut out. The backgrounds were created with dry brushed acrylic oceans and wet on wet watercolor skies. The children were encouraged to create their own unique sky (sunset, sunrise, nighttime, ect.) to set the mood of their mixed media pieces.And last, a splattering of watered down white acrylic to create the splash of our breaching orcas.

E. A. Seguy

 Sonja, 8

Sadie, 7

Jenna, 10

 Cora, 5 (Entering Kindergarten in September - Gorgeous!)

 Tristyn, 8

 Lacie, 8

 Butch, 6

When I told the two groups of students in my "Creatures, Great and Small" classes that we'd be drawing flies for our first project, the collective sigh of disappointment was audible. ;) "Trust me, you can make these beautiful." They definitely proved me right! This project was inspired by the beautifully rendered insects and gorgeous patterns of French turn of the century artist, Eugene Alain Seguy. I am a Huge admirer of his art. So I thought it would be interesting to combine both of these elements into one piece.

We started by drawing a horse fly (disgusting I know, but it made for a bold drawing). The children shaded their drawings with charcoal. As one of my blogger friends put it, "charcoal achieves drama.like nothing else." I copied these in my printer twice to give us three cut flies for our pieces.The backgrounds were created with liquid watercolors, followed by styrofoam carved stamps using acrylics and finished with oil pastel details. I told the children to pretend that they were wallpaper or fabric designers.The last step was to arrange the flies in a eye pleasing pattern. I love the contrast of the charcoal bugs against the brightly colored backgrounds. Well done kids!