By Patty on Jun 4, 2017 |
Who doesn’t love an easy project? This one Watercolor Flower Garden is as easy as you can get. All you need is a small sheet of watercolor paper, black waterproof marker, a white crayon and a few colors of liquid watercolor paint. Children draw a series of flowers to make a garden. The flowers don’t have to be complex…just a few simple circles with petals is all you need. You can download a drawing guide that will generate ideas quickly or you can have each child create their garden from their imaginations. After drawing with a black marker, outline each flower and the leaves with a white oil pastel or white crayon. This helps define the flower shapes even more. If a child wishes to have an area of the art stay white, encourage him to color the area our shape with the white crayon. Now for the fun part….dab, brush and dribble liquid watercolor paints over the entire drawing. No need to stay within the lines! Here’s a video to show the process… Need a drawing prompt? Here’s a drawing handout to download. Click on the YELLOW tab...
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By Patty Palmer on Feb 2, 2016 |
This is a great way to teach the color-wheel for young children. I’m not sure where this lesson originated but my typewritten copy is by Lois Ann Lynn from Rosamond, UT. Thank you Lynn! Print out the Color Wheel Chart PDF and photocopy onto card stock. Each container of Play-Doh yields about 30 pieces (this is dependent on how big you make the balls. I would try for the size of a red grape). Each child receives a color wheel sheet plus 3 balls of Play-Doh. Place the yellow ball on the “yellow” on the colorwheel. Do the same for the red and blue. If you are working with very young children who don’t know how to read, you can place the balls on the sheets for them. Pinch off a piece of the red ball and a piece from the yellow ball and squeeze, squish and roll together. You’ll know whether you are on the right track by the squeals of delight from the kids. Once the color is created, place that color ball on the space between the two colors that made it. Repeat with the other colors. Press the finished pieces onto the card stock to...
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By Patty Palmer on Jan 27, 2016 |
As much as I like watching kids color and paint, there is absolutely no substitute for the tactile experience of clay. I am lucky to have a kiln at my school but not everyone does. You may be a home-educator who doesn’t own a kiln (nor should you!) or even a classroom teacher who prefers to work without the kiln-experience. While it’s true that it’s hard to replicate kiln-fired clay and gloss glaze, you can come pretty close. If you have access to basic art supplies like Crayola air-dry clay, liquid tempera paints and Mod-Podge, then you can do all of the projects in this booklet. I explain how to create a fish and a lizard using both kiln-fire and air dry clay and these techniques can be applied to all projects. This booklet is designed to give you step-by-step instructions so you can make creative clay projects with your kids and students. There are SIX projects included in this packet and every project is easily made with either kiln-fired clay or air dry clay. Templates help students easily create the shape from a clay tile. FIND MORE CERAMIC ART LESSONS IN THE MEMBERS CLUB BY CLICKING BELOW… ...
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By Patty Palmer on Jan 26, 2016 |
Incorporating literature into art projects remains my favorite type of lesson. Last year, I introduced Petunia to my third grade students. Using a painting technique that I call smoothing, my students sketched a goose with pencil then painted with happy colors, just like the book. Don’t have the book? You can download this delightful video found on YouTube: WHAT YOU’LL NEED: 12″ x 18″ white sulphite paper Pencil and Eraser Red, yellow, white, blue, green and black liquid tempera paint (I use Crayola) I medium tip round brush 1 small tip round brush (for outlining) Black marker, black crayon or lack oil pastel as optional outing supplies. DRAWING I photocopied a few pages from the book and placed on the children’s tables. Using observation techniques, the kids practiced drawing their own Petunia. I encouraged them to make a dot near the top of the paper and one near the bottom. The dots provided guidelines for where to start the head and where to place the feet. This ensures the goose will be drawn large enough to fill most of the paper. PAINTING Once the drawing was complete, children dipped a medium paint brush in the red paint and painted sections of the background paper. We used the smoothing technique to achieve a smooth paint finish. The children carefully painted around Petunia and the spring flowers. After the background was complete, the children painted the flowers and leaves with a collection of green, yellow and blue paint mixed with small amounts of white. This created TINTS and resembled the illustrations found in the book. OUTLINING Once the paint is dry, children can use a small pointed brush dipped in watered-down black paint to outline Petunia. Notice how the children didn’t paint Petunia white? The white paper offered enough contrast so that painting the goose white seemed unnecessary. Although, children can paint their goose if they wish. If you don’t like to use black paint to outline, you can use a thick black marker or even a crayon. Experiment and see what medium works best for you....
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By Patty Palmer on Nov 17, 2015 |
These black and white cats inspired by artist, Laurel Burch, start with a simple line drawing in oil pastel and completed with shades of grey and colorful painted paper flowers. One of the most inspiring teachers I know (well, virtually speaking) is Ginger from Paintbrush Rocket. I absolutely adore everything she does. I personally think she is a color genius as everything on her art site is so striking. This lesson is based on one of her images on Flickr (of which I cannot hunt down for the life of me). I personally find it hard to teach children about warm and cool colors but learning tints and shades is a breeze for most kids. These black and white cats inspired by artist, Laurel Burch, start with a simple line drawing in oil pastel and completed with shades of grey and colorful painted paper flowers. This is what we did: 1. Drawing the Cat To start the project off quickly, I gave each student access to a round container top. The kids traced the top on a 12″ x 18″ white paper with a black oil pastel. You can use crayons or even markers if you wish. Basic Instructions: Trace circle top for head. Add a cat’s face (no whiskers yet) Add triangles for ears Starting at the right side of the head, draw a slightly curved line to the other edge of the paper and curve down to almost the bottom. Draw a straight horizontal line all the way to the other side of the paper (trust me, here) Go back to head and draw one line towards the bottom of the paper, joining with the straight horizontal line. Now, add the leg definition by drawing two upside down letter “U’s”. Add a long tail in whatever space you have available. We kept the drawing super simple and large. I wanted the kids to have plenty of space to add their paint later on. Using the black oil pastel, divide the cat drawing into shapes using lines, shapes and patterns. 2. Value Painting (+ a little gold) To create grey scale, place some black and white liquid tempera paint in a muffin-style tray. Kids can mixed bits of white with...
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By Patty Palmer on Aug 30, 2015 |
Growing up on Prince Edward Island offered me the opportunity to travel to the mainland by ferry boat. We loved discovering which ferry we would ride on and we knew each one down to the smallest details. This was usually the best part of our trip. I created this 5 minute video to detail a few features of my favorite ferryboat, The Abegweit. My first grade students had fun looking at a few James Rizzi prints, especially his ocean-themed painting. His animated style of drawing is perfect for kids. We used his ferry boat illustration as our inspiration for this watercolor painting project. To start, the kids looked a James Rizzi styled boats then got busy drawing. You can do a directed line drawing for the boat but I preferred to show the kids the various shapes involved and let them draw at their own pace. My first graders used oil pastels, liquid watercolor and pan watercolors on watercolor paper but you can easily use regular drawing paper, markers and even color pencils or crayons to color. The important part of this lesson is the drawing and learning how shapes combine to form recognizable objects. My advice is to try drawing a ferry boat using your preference for materials and see what happens. In the full version of this lesson, I give my suggestion for materials in order to scale the projects up or down for various grade levels. Using liquid watercolors, the kids painted the background first then used pan watercolors for the details. ARE YOU A SPARKLER? This lessons and 0ver 300 art lessons are available inside the Members Club. Access to videos, resources & trainings for one low monthly fee. CLICK THE IMAGE TO SIGN UP FOR NOTIFICATION OF OUR NEXT...
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