Sunday, October 29, 2017

Cardboard Fall Leaves

I developed a new fall art project for my co-op classes. The first week we designed large leaves on cardboard and drew a "fall" word on them. Then I took them home and cut them out (kitchen shears work well on thinner cardboard) and used a masking agent on the letters. The second week, the kids painted their leaves with acrylic paint.

I find pizza boxes are a nice weight of cardboard for crafting. I made a maple leaf, and then it was so fun I had to make a few more "samples".

After painting them, we let them dry and rubbed off the masking agent to reveal the cardboard color for letters.




 Finished pieces were fabulous!






Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Art Class

This year I am teaching two classes in our home school co-op: 3/4th and 5th-7th. So far I have done the same lessons for both classes. The kids are a delight, and I enjoy sharing my love of art with them.
This project on optical illusion was paired with another lesson on basic drawing tricks of optical illusions. I found this lesson on-line, but have done it before in my classes. Here is the blog link.


The first day of class, we made name tags to set at their places. This helps me to learn names. This idea was also found on-line. The process is to write out the letters of the name in capitals that touch the top and bottom of the page edges. This forms negative space between letters.We copied over the letters in black marker. Black crayon or oil pastel would work too. Then we talked about patterns and drew a few on the board. Each negative space was to be filled in with a different pattern using color crayons.

The final step was to paint each negative space with watercolor. We talked about pattern, line, resist, negative space, transparent-vs-opaque.
I loved how these turned out. A good successful project for all.

One week I was gone and my assistant teacher taught this lesson, again touching on making things look 3-D on a flat surface. We did not get any photos, but these two were from the "tutorial" I sent her. I've done this one before, too. the links are here and here

Sunday, October 22, 2017

Thursday, October 19, 2017

This and That Sept.

W. turned 15!
L turned 22! Cousin love in church.
Everyone home for birthday lunch on Sunday.
Fiancee' friends.
Got a new craft cupboard and had to re-arrange my study to fit it in.

M is is the thick of her Horticulture studies, and loves the college life.

She also went with her cousin to help with a hot air balloon launch and ended up getting to ride!
Husband had a soybean/railroad meeting that met in a special train car.

Tuesdays are speech and piano in town, lunch out, then Bio and Poetry afterwards with these two high schoolers. Abbie and W.

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Rock Painting

Our camp craft this year was rock painting. The owl and the tree are ideas from the internet, not my own.