Viva Frida

This post is about a particular kindergarten artist that just happens to be my daughter. She saw me looking at a book about Frida Kahlo last week and was TOTALLY fascinated! She has always loved flowers and jewelry and begs to wear dangle earings to school every day so when she saw the image of Frida, she connected right away. She immediately went to a table and drew and painted this picture of Frida!

Frida was an artist that created beautiful art. When she was young, she was a passenger in a bus that had a horrible accident with several cars. Many people died-she suffered horrific injuries and it is a miracle that she lived. Through her pain she created beautiful images with bright colors. She could never escape the pain from her accident but found hope and joy through painting! She fell deeply in love with Diego Rivera, a famous muralist in Mexico. She was a very unique individual and not affraid to dress differently and create art differently than the other women in Mexico during her time. She had monkeys and parrots as pets and planted extraordinary tropical gardens around her home. We admire her for her strength and the beauty she created! 

Check out this award winning book by Yuyi Morales about Frida from the library! 

or purchase it on Amazon 

http://amzn.to/204THKq

After talking about Frida, she wanted to draw Frida on a large paper, so I gave her a lesson on facial proportion, eyes, nose, lips, and we looked at pictures of Frida in books. This was the picture she drew!! 

After many more drawings I got her a large canvas and she began drawing Frida once more. She also learned how to draw roses from this rose draw a long I made for Dia De Los Muertos

She spent two hours drawing Frida on canvas with detailed flowers and jewelry! 

This was her finished painting after three days. She says her next painting will be of Frida. 

Here is a timelapse of her painting from start to finish, dancing included!! 

Do you like Frida? Bring your Frida art to school or email me a photo and I will add it to the blog!!

App Highlight #1 IMotion

Last weekend as my kids plugged away at games on the Ipad I decided to try out some creative art Apps to get them using their brains!

I have decided that I will highlight a new App on my blog every week! 

This App is called IMotion and was VERY easy to use. My daughters are 5 and 7 and had no trouble creating movies by themselves with the app.
We stood the Ipad up with a stand and they created these videos. Soon my living room was full of props, stuffed animal characters, and backdrops! It was a blast to watch them be movie producers and create all kinds of creative movies! Please leave any App suggestions in the comments! Thanks!

You can also make videos of yourself doing art projects! Here is a stop motion animation of my daughter outlining a drawing that she made of Frida Kahlo!

How to make a pipe cleaner Bunny (by Shelby)

My daughters have been making pipe cleaner animals all weekend. I posted about it yesterday with directions here http://www.elementaryartfun.blogspot.com/2015/10/fuzzy-creatures-crafting-with-chennile.html

So I have a guest author who wanted to write this blog!!

Today my 5 year old wanted to make a video about how to make a bunny...she created a very good way of combining 2 pipe cleaners to make a bunny!

Next use the Sculpey clay to make the face, eyes, tail, and feet

You can use beads for the eyes.

Bake your clay parts on 275 for 15-20 minutes

then let an adult glue the pieces on your pipe cleaner animal. Or Tacky glue will work too.

When you are finished make a THOUSAND MORE!!

And build them a house!!

 And train your dragon how to carry them all!!!

Shrimp the Parrot Creative One Day project!

About once a month we do a project where we have an animal guest like Clover the tortoise, Shrimp the parrot, Bunbun the rabbit, or Chico the bunny.

We talk about the animal and I show them a simple way to draw it.

Then students create an imaginative composition with the only criteria being that it has our animal guest somewhere in the picture! I encourage them to fill the page and create an ORIGINAL idea...

This was the way I showed them how to draw the bird. They can modify it or just draw their own bird completely.

This is a one day activity, so they had to draw AND color in one class period. It was a challenge to use their time wisely and not worry so much about every detail being perfect.

I Just LOVE the creativity that happened in my room this week! My students had fun and came up with some fabulous Shrimpwork!

This weekend Shrimp has been painting with my daughter and offering his skillful hands for help and his cultured eye for critique!

Fuzzy creatures! Crafting with Chennile stems and clay!!

This weekend we are celebrating the sending off of our artwork for our Art to Remember Fundraiser! I am so excited and will write a special blog all about it soon!

This weekend we celebrated our finished fundraiser with a trip to the craft store! My girls chose Sculpey clay and a BIG pack of assorted chenille stems. 

We were inspired by this cool blog with lots of cool fuzzy creature creations! http://www.garieinternational.com.sg/clay/furry.htm

We folded them in to lizards, bears, bunnies, and dragons

then we crafted the faces and details with the clay, baked it on 275 for 15 minutes and then glued them on

 My daughters have been carrying around their fuzzy friends for two days! It was a fun project and I'm sure there will be lots more fuzzy friends in the next few days!