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We had the fiercest artists around today at Peninsula Art Academy!

I got my jungle jaguar inspiration from Mary Making.  She created her own jungle jaguar using paper collage and colored pencils. I love the mixed media approach, but we didn’t have time for watercolors to dry today.
I decided to go a step further and teach the kids how to create a foreground, middle and background using collage elements. But first, we created our jaguar close-ups with a guided drawing that explored blending and shading. So proud of how much the kids absorbed!

 

Next the kids cut out their jaguars, and I gave them big construction paper to create their ‘background’ rain forest.

We used oil pastels and colored pencils to draw our jungle scene. Then we added the ‘middle ground’ or the middle of our scene, by collaging paper leaves and water. Finally we added the ‘foreground’ of our pictures, and glued our super-big jaguars and leaves in front.

The kids used their imaginations with the rain forest scenery, but we also had reference images for inspiration!

The post Jungle Jaguars at Scribble Kids! appeared first on Scribble Kids.

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(Added the shadow color before the cookie was dry, and the yellow bled. Whoops!)

Saturday night, as I’ve mentioned, is one of the best parts of my week. My boys go to bed early these days—7:30, ever since the time change. (Ahhh…) Rose and Beanie watched S.H.I.E.L.D. with Scott. And Rilla and I cozy up on my bed to listening to our current audiobook—right now we’re midway through Matilda, having had such a delightful time with The BFG—and our sketchbooks.

Sometimes we start off with a few short art videos on YouTube for warmups. Lately we’ve had some of our most fun bouts of clip-watching yet, because we have discovered Koosje Koene’s Draw Tip Tuesday. Koosje is a Dutch artist who teaches online art classes at Sketchbook Skool and via her own site. Her clips are clear, fun, and super helpful. Rilla and I are having the best time making our way through all of them. I’m learning a lot!

I’ll share only a few here. It was hard to choose which ones! You can click through to see the whole series. We have subscribed to Koosje’s Youtube channel so we won’t miss anything.

We had fun with this tangerine:

(direct link)

And this cookie quartet:

(direct link)

Of course we couldn’t resist the one about popsicles:

(direct link)

This tip for how to draw both edges of a banner at once was new to me and is very cool:

(direct link)

Enjoy!

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Introducing Deep Space Sparkle! No, it's not a blog about astronomy but rather my brand new Art Blog. This is my absolute favorite name for a crayon so thus the blog name. And besides, my budding little Picasso's deserved a place to view their fabulous works of art without being hindered with all that stuff about writing a novel.
So anyone who visits this blog for art lessons or updates from the schools where I teach, you now have a new place to go.
Please visit me at www.deepspacesparkle.blogspot.com
The artist is signing off... Read the rest of this post

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After teaching art for four years, and being a creative person, I'm always trying to come up with some new twists on some perennial favorites. The first grade self portrait is one such project.
I didn't the kids to only focus on what they look like when painting their face, I wanted them to go further. To image themselves in the future and what they might like to be when they grow up. We brainstormed lots of ideas and we talked about how you would draw being a magician, or singer, or fisherman. The kids quickly figured out one or two things they would need to put in the painting so one could quickly tell what the picture was suppose to be. Here are the steps.

1. With a pencil, trace oval cardboard onto white 12 x 18 paper. Tip: I always have the kids trace an available. That way you can be sure that the head shape will the right size.
   
2. Draw eyes, mouth, nose, hair and hats, helmets or head decoration.
3. In a muffin type palette, mix 2-3 shades of skin tones, black, brown, yellow, blue and green paint. Have the kids paint their skin first, painting right over the nose but leaving the eyes and mouth. Next paint the hair and then, after the skin paint has dried slightly, paint the eyes and mouth.
   
4. Have the kids paint any hats, helmets or head accessories.
5. If you are doing this in two classes, this is a good step to take a break. Now that the face and hair are dry, have the kids draw the background. Put out a new palette of paint to include colors for backgrounds. Black, red, blue, green, orange, brown.
6. When everything is dry, use a Sharpie or any black marker to trace over all the details. This is a key step. The kids can add pupils to their eyes and details can be enhanced in the background. Every line must be traced.
7. Final step, and the most fun, add sequins, glitter, buttons, shiny paper to bring the whole painting to life.
8. 

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Teaching art to kindergarten kids can be tricky. You can make it easy by having them color or fingerpaint, but that wouldn't make for a great art program...so, I spend alot of time coming up with age-appropriate art activities that all kids, no matter what their ability, can master.
This is one such lesson.
I discovered it in School Arts magazine and it was developed by Art Teacher, Julia Stone.

My Kinder classes are 30 minutes long, so I broke this lesson into three class times.

1. Painting the background
2. Drawing the fish
3. Adding decorations

The first class of the year was spent getting very messy. I pre-mixed different colors of blue tempera paint and placed three tubs on each table. I demonstrated to the children how to layer the paints then run combs or texturing tools through the paint to create "lines". After the kids finished, I had the kids guess what they were making. Most guessed the ocean.

In the second class, we talked about fish and what they looked like, how they all have tails and fins, etc. I demonstrated how to draw a simple body shape and asked the kids to invent their own fish. This is an important part of teaching these little kids...making sure they can instill their own ideas and creativity into their art.
They finished the drawing by coloring in with oil pastel. I gave them free reign with this part. They could add poka dots, zig-zags or even try to make the fish colors realistic. No one did!

The last class was the most fun and challenging. The kids had to cut out their fish. For some, cutting is difficult. This was a perfect project to aid them in their new skill. After the fish was cut out, the kids added buttons and sequins for their eyes and glitter tissue for the seaweed, or in some cases, crowns!

I think the fish turned out very well and each child was very proud.

(from top left: Erick M, Dylan S, Tyson B, Lucy L and Kylee H from Mountain View School)

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This two-part lesson for first graders is one of my favorites. I love the collage aspect of this project and every year, I have the kids make the scarecrow a wee bit different.
The first phase involves oil pastels and watercolor paint. I prefer to use liquid watercolor for this project, rather than watercolor pans, as the results are pure, not muddy. After looking at pictures of fields and farmland, the kids are instructed to draw a few lines in oil pastel. We start with the horizon line, add a few vertical lines for the fields and wavy, horizontal lines to break the large fields up. The kids use a white oil pastel to draw the sun. Next, we paint the sky blue and watch the clouds appear like magic. Next, the kids use green, orange, magenta watercolors to paint their fields.
An easy way to make the scarecrow is to use templates. They're easy to make and reduce the level of frustration most kids get when trying to cut out a perfect pair of pants. We add patches, buttons and raffia to our scarecrow and give him a big smile.



(From Mrs. Ranson's 1st grade class at Foothill School: L-R Katie (top) Fiona, Karina, Lauren, and Julian)

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The kids at Foothill School painted sailboats in art class this week. We talked a bit about the basic parts of a boat and worked hard to create a boom big enough to paint. But it was the sails that were the most fun to decorate. A few kids added skulls and cross bones...I mean, what boat would be complete without that? But some kids added hearts, flowers, polka dots and traditional stripes to round out their colorful sails. I think the best part is that the kids only had a color palette of red, blue and yellow. They painted one section of their drawings at at time, mixing and adding orange, purple and green as needed.

Here are a few shots of the kids in action.

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I had to take some of the kids' artwork out of frames to exhibit at the fair, so thought I'd take the opportunity to photograph a few of the paintings to send to my parents and post here. The two watercolors -- Daniel's rabbit and Laura's hummingbird -- were in the same category, and were the only entries in the youth section to tie for first place. I thought they were beautiful when I received

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The students at Brandon School created a wonderful legacy in the "produce-inspired" ceramic mural. First, the student's drew their chosen California produce onto a 5"x5" piece of paper, then turned the one-dimensional drawing into a 3-dimensional tile by pulling, attaching, molding and texturing. Most kids really got into this tactile art project and created beautiful, realistic avocados, husks of corn, bunches of grapes, sweet cherries, artichokes, Meyer lemons and naval oranges!

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Laura's been taking art lessons for about a year and a half now, and Daniel since September. Since I'm playing with the digital camera, I thought I'd try my hand at their latest efforts, completed this month: Cowboy and horse by Daniel This is his second or third project since September; he used a grid and acrylic paints, copying a photograph from an old calendar I saved.

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