Friday 19 August 2016

Winter Portraits



This fabulous lesson is inspired by the amazing Cassie Stephens.  She never ceases to amaze me with her creativity and ideas.  She even produces video's on how to do things!  Click here for her directions on this project. 

I just love this lesson as it incorporates so many elements of art.  We printed, used collage, drew lines and patterns, painted with tints, learnt how to make pom poms, plaits and finger knitted.  We even learnt how to draw facial features. Wow!!

We did these over two weeks.  The first week we produced the foam templates for the hats and gloves and produced marker prints from these.  The second week we printed with brayers and ink, drew our faces and put it all together (yes this was a busy lesson yet we managed it, a few finished them off the next week)..

It's best to follow Cassie's fab directions for this lesson.  Our only changes were we added bodies to our people and we used wool for the hair (an opportunity to teach the girls to plait).  Some children wanted to learn finger knitting so some have finger knitted scarfs.

I love how these all came out so different.



Well done students! 

Now we have done these I think its time for Spring to arrive as I'm over Winter!

Cheers
Fiona

Wednesday 3 August 2016

SPIN ART - 5 Ways...



It was just a SPIN of creativity in the studio (and school art room) last week with all 8 of my classes learning lots of different ways of creating Spin Art.....

I welcomed my new BWPS Lunchtime art class and it was so much fun seeing how creative and excited they all were...

Look at these colours (no filters)......


1. Spin Art with a Salad Spinner

This is just so much fun.  I'm not going to tell you how to do it here as you just need to Google "salad spinner art" and lots of posts come up.  I can't quite believe its taken me this long to do this in my classes.  I've had a salad spinner sitting in the art room for 3 years with plans on doing a lesson on it. 

My new preschool classes have got me remembering all the great process orientated art I've seen or done in the past.

We used fluro paint (and some normal colours) for this and I love the vibrancy of the results.  Kmart sells little packs of 4 fluro paints for $5, this paint is quite thin for normal painting yet perfect for spin art!




2. Spin Art using the Pottery Wheel

I've done this a few times now at parties and workshops and its always the biggest hit.  Actually I think all the children could have done numerous ones of these yet I only had time for everyone to have one go.  Unfortunately I couldn't do this one with the school group as there is no wheel at school...


Although its really just about experimenting and there are no rights and wrongs, the way to get the best results is:
  • Use watercolour paints
  • Have the wheel spinning before touching the paintbrush
  • Don't saturate the paper too much (or it tears)
  • Use watercolour paper or heavy paper
  • Blue tac the paper to the wheel (so it doesn't fly off)
  • I recommend that the children do rings first with a paint brush then we use a pipette to add blobs of colour that splatter outwards
  • For very young children an adult will need to stand on the wheel peddle for them


3. Spin Art using CD's

This one is pretty easy and the results would make the best wrapping paper if you don't want to put it up.  We used big paper (A2) so that the children could fit lots of prints on the paper.

Method:
  • Squeeze small blobs of paint onto a CD
  • Flip CD over 
  • SPIN using your hand
  • Take off CD
  • Repeat




4. Marker CD Spinners (and some store bought ones too)

I made some of these myself using CD's, markers and blue tac (to keep the marker in place) yet I also found some in Kmart afterwards we used the store bought ones too.  Admittedly the store ones do work better.  The children just spin the marker spinner on a piece of paper (like using a spinning top) and watch the amazing patterns it makes..




5. Mandala CD Spinners (School and Friday classes only)

I've done these a few times before and I just love how easy and fun they are.  You just need to glue a marble into the centre of a CD.  The children the draw a mandala onto the CD (we used perm markers and Posca markers).  When complete get them to spin it like a spinning top...Fun!! 





 Happy Spinning...

Fiona