Tissue Turtles and Resist Rabbits

 Today kinder, 1st, and 2nd grade started their tissue paper turtles.

We looked at "Clover" and examined all of the shapes on her back and the texture on her arms

 The kids loved watching her slowly walk across their tables as they worked. I put her on each table for a few minutes while I monitored her.

The kids used a large black Staonal crayon to decorate their shells with lots of shapes

to do the tissue paper printing 

1. paint small area with water

2. place tissue on the water and then paint a little water on top of the tissue to make sure the whole square is completely saturated or I tell the kids "see through" on their turtle shell

 3.repeat until the whole shell is covered and no white paper is showing

4. when the tissue paper is dry, you can remove to reveal your beautiful print!

We used green paper to draw the head, and legs. They drew the eyes on white paper and glued the eyes on the turtles

Here are a few finished ones from second grade

I have been playing around with ideas for an Easter project

I thought of making bunnies using a stencil. Have you ever wondered what bunnies have to do with Easter? Bunnies are a symbol of Spring, but also a symbol of new life!

1.get a lightweight plastic binder like the one below

2. draw a bunny on it with a sharpie 

 3. I used an exacto knife to cut out the bunny (adult use only!!)

 4. I used Mod Podge to create the resist by blotting over it with a sponge brush. Tomorrow I am going to try this again using a spray paint clear gloss. I will post results...

5. When the Mod Podge dries, I used liquid watercolors to paint a design over the whole paper. I blotted the white part with a tissue as I painted to keep it nice and white. The lines were not as sharp as I had hoped, so I finished it off by tracing it with a sharpie. I am also considering letting the kids use silver spray paint to paint the stencil on black paper and use silver sharpies to make some zentangle eggs in the background...I will also post the results of those soon!!

Still Life: Shoes

Last month, my students did a still life project of their shoes. The success rate was HUGE and they learned a lot about drawing from life, Emphasis, and Rhythm.



The key to their success was trying to train their mind to draw with their eyes! We started with a contour line of their shoe from TWO different view points that looked something like below. An outline of what they see with NOTHING in the middle. Then they use that as a reference to fill in the lines for the rest of the shoe.

We talked about how to listen to your eyes, not your mind. For instance, their mind says to draw a circle for the laces holes, but in reality it is a “C” shape because the lace overlaps the circle. 

Then we learned about EMPHASIS
I asked them what was emphasis and showed them some photos of how emphasis can be created with..
Clarity Texture
Light Line
Color
Space/Shape/composition
Then when I asked if the shoes would still have emphasis if they colored them the same color as the background. They said no because they would blend in and camoflage.


Their backgrounds had to have PATTERN and also create RHYTHM