Winter Snow Scene with Houses Using Acrylic White Paint Art Lesson

 

Supplies you will need:

White acrylic paint

Toothbrushes and paintbrushes

Blue paper

House shapes out of cardstock

Round sponge dauber

White colored pencil

Using shapes cut out of cardstock stick them where you choose with masking tape.  

You can just use squares and rectangles and paint the chimneys later.

Create the snow by pulling your finger across the bristles of the toothbrush with white paint on it.

Hold the brush close to the paper and put more splatters of snow where the houses are.

Create the moon in the sky with a sponge dauber.

Using a brush add the snow to the foreground and add the smoke to the chimneys.

Remove the taped down houses and add snow to the rooftops and chimney.  Add any other details you want like trees etc...

Now add the windows and doors to all the houses using the white pencils.

Great lesson that is pretty much foolproof for any age!

Here are a few examples of my students' work:

 Gingerbread Party - A Mixed Media Holiday Art Project

This is a fun project with lots of bright happy colors and festive decorated Gingerbread Cookies.

I'm going to have some gingerbread cookies on hand as a treat while we wait for them to dry!

You will need:

Watercolor paper

Watercolors (I use liquid watercolors)

Oil Pastels

White Acrylic paint

Glue sticks

First paint your cookies brown with watercolor paint.

I cut my cookies out of watercolor paper using a Cricut, but you can have cookie cutters on hand for them to trace and cut out also.

While those are drying we'll work on the background and come back to them later.

Next add your cookie sprinkles to the background using oil pastels.  Ask your students to do them nice and dark so they will resist the watercolor paint.

I thought it would be fun to have a festive background for the cookies, like a messy countertop with sprinkles.

Next the students will paint their background.  

I'm going to give them the choice of yellow, red/pink, green or blue.

They'll do a watercolor wash over the sprinkles.

Now these can be set aside to dry while we "Ice" the cookies.

I used white acrylic paint and a small brush.  For the dots I used a bamboo skewer dipped in paint and dotted onto the cookie.  Both sides are great, one for bigger dots and one for smaller dots.

When they have all their cookies decorated and dry they can glue them on the background.

Next we'll add the shadow around to cookie to give their art a little depth.  Help them choose a darker color oil pastel that compliments their colors but is also darker than the background.  They just trace around one side.  Whichever side they pick they need to do all the cookies the same.

For the yellow I used purple, complimentary colors, 

for the pink/red I used green, 

but for the blue I used dark blue instead of orange because I wanted a darker color than orange.

You could add other colors of icing to the gingerbread but I really like the contrast of the brown and white against the bright background, it really makes the POP!

After I teach this I'll post some photos of young artist creations!

Owl Mixed Media Art Lesson

   

I've been wanting to do an Owl Art Lesson for a while and Fall seemed like the perfect time.

 I'm going to use watercolor paper and black card stock,  watercolors, white acrylic and white chalk pastel.

To get the sizing right I'm going to give them a template with the outline of the owl to trace onto the watercolor paper.  This is 8 1/2 X 11" paper.  So if you print your own from the photo you have the size.

Once they have their "owltline" done they do the lines on the ear feathers.

Now from the bottom of the ear draw a line from each side meeting in a V in the middle.

Using a penny trace each eye with a little bit of the penny over the V.  It won't be a complete circle.

Begin the beak, but don't complete it yet.

Draw a curved line below the beak, then draw the curved lines from the V to meet with that curve under the beak.

Finish the beak.

Now create the large pupils in the Owl's Eyes.

Add the curved lines on the eyes next to the beak.

Now you can decorate however you want to create texture and feathers.

I began with a scalloped line under the face for the neck and added a wing.

Added another scalloped line to the top of the wing.

Added longer feathers under the line on the wing.  Now go over the pencil lines with Sharpie.

Now we are going to start adding color.  I use liquid watercolor which is very vibrant.

I want my students to begin with a warm fall color, orange,yellow or red.  Then use that color selectively on at least 3 parts of the owl.  

We will also look at my examples and talk about complimentary colors.

After doing the top of the head I mixed red and green to make a brown, trying to work fast to get a little wet into wet blending where the two colors meet.

Now add the other two areas with the warm color chosen.

For the front of the Owl we are going to do a wet into wet wash with the warm colors.

Since I have Yellow as my selected color I began my wash with orange.  If Orange was my selected color I would have chosen yellow or red to get a contrast.

The Eyes are the focus with the owl, I chose to do Orange and Yellow together. More brown for the beak.

Now we are going to choose the complimentary color for Yellow which is Purple to finish our base layer of watercolor.  Had we used Orange it would have been blue like my other example.  Red would have been green.

Using brown I added some feathers at the top of the head.  Using a dark blue more lines in the face to show the texture of feathers.

I added some more feathers with w shapes repeated in red on the front and brown and blue on the wings.

Before I teach this I'm going to show my students several ways to do feathers and they can choose how they want to do it.

Now add some highlights with white acrylic paint watered down.  On the face, top of the head, ears, beak and spots on the chest.  You can also add some brown spots.  I just used the tip of my brush to make the spots.

Finally, cut out your owl and put a moon on your black card stock with a chalk pastel, and smooth is around with your finger to create a glow around the edges.  Glue your owl to the black paper.  You can add stars or a tree etc...  But it is more dramatic with just the bright owl and moon.

Happy Fall!

1st-6th grade Owls

 Gyataku Art Lesson for all Ages and Abilities

Fish Prints using Japanese Calligraphy Ink, Banner Paper and Rubber Fish Molds

Gya means Fish and Taku means press or print.  This art form originated in Japan around 1870 as a way for sports fishermen to record the exact size and species of fish they had caught before the invention of photography.  Today, sports fishermen in Japan often display gyotaku as wall decorations in their homes, or they keep them as a sort of journal to document their success in the sport. Many Japanese fishing magazines hold contests each year for the largest fish caught for each species. The winners of these competitions are chosen from the gyotaku that were submitted.

In 1955, the Association of Gyotaku was formed, and the first exhibition was held at the Matsuya Gallery in Ginza, Tokyo. The first gyotaku exhibition held outside of Japan took place in 1956 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Supplies Needed:

Fish Mold

Black Ink

Lightweight paper such as Banner Paper or Rice paper

Colored Pencils

Background paper 

Glue and Scissors

After looking at examples of Gyataku printed with colorful ink I decided to try just using black ink, which dries very fast on the thin paper, then colored pencil over the ink.

Which ends up looking like it is under the ink.

First I put the fish molds on aluminum foil, then each artist covers the fish with ink using a brush.

I asked them to work quickly before the ink dries to get the best prints.

Also not to use too much ink, which will make the paper weak because it's too wet.

They need to carefully remove the paper because it sticks to the fish a little bit.

If the paper rips it's fine because they are glueing it onto a background paper.

Once they finish printing their fish and the ink is dry use the colored pencils to add bright colors, including layering colors.

Some artists cut an outline around their fish.  Others wanted just the white paper.

Others added an underwater scene for the fish to have an aquatic habitat.

I taught this to children, adults and Artists with Disabilities and they all did wonderful Gyataku!

What I liked was the simplicity of the one color of ink, but the colorful drawing over the top.  Easy to teach and easy to clean up!  Have Fun!