Week 1-Elementary Art-Wayne Thiebaud-inspired sculptures

Yay!  It's fall!  That means that school has started and I am back teaching art lessons to students.

I am teaching at Williamsburg Classical Academy which is a  homeschool co-op.  I have 2 classes-an elementary art class and a teen art class.

I wanted to get the elementary students excited about this year so I wanted to do a project where we could complete it in one class.  

Wayne Thiebaud is a contemporary artist who has made himself famous by painting everyday objects production style.

The kids were interested in knowing that Wayne Thiebaud is still alive.  I had them figure out how old he was since he was born in 1920(it's always good to throw some math in there!).

 The kids and I discussed things that we like to draw and create which lead itself into showing them that you can use just about any subject for your art piece.

The cupcake painting was a good transition to introducing our project.

I found this lesson plan on the Dick Blick educator site.The problem was that one of key supplies for the project is discontinued.  It was a spreadable thick acrylic-based paint.  I had to find a substitute so I searched Pinterest and found this recipe for a homemade modeling paste.  This was great because modeling paste is usually pretty expensive and I didn't want to be stingy when I was handing it out.

I picked some bright colors for the cupcake "frosting" and pre-made a bunch of it before class.  I did have to mix some blue later on when we ran out but it wasn't that big of a deal.   I was getting used to eye-balling the measurements.

The kids really enjoyed "frosting" their cupcakes.

Then then decorated them with bead "sprinkles" in various colors.  I had some little red pom-poms in case they wanted to put a cherry on top of them.  They all seemed to enjoy the project.  Here are their results:

I hope you enjoyed these.  Next week will be our Paperclay leaves which the teen class started last week.  Fun, beautiful project.

Thank you for reading!

My 2 pieces for the On the Hill Gallery "Salvaged for a Purpose" Members Show

I am dropping off two pieces at for the Members show at On the Hill Gallery in Yorktown.  The first piece I call "Blue Ridge Mountains Majesty".  It is composed entirely of wallpaper from discard wallpaper sample books that were donated to me from a local company.  I affixed the torn pieces onto a 9"x12" canvas panel with Liquitex Gloss Gel.  I ended up coated the piece with Liquitex Pouring Medium before I framed it.

My 2nd piece is a magazine bowl made from vintage National Geographic magazines that I purchased from my local Habitat for Humanity Restore.

I did both of these projects with my middle school homeschool art class.  I hope to be able to post in the future their pieces because I am so proud of the job that they did.

Show opens May 4th and runs until May 31st.

Thanks for stopping by to take a look at my blog!

Kids Art Lesson on Henri Matisse

After searching Pinterest and the internet for a couple of weeks, I put together a lesson plan for my K-5 Homeschool art students on Henri Matisse.

List of Supplies:

• 12"x12" or 11"x14" Stretched Canvas(one for each student)
• Colored Cardstock
• Sponges
• Foam Brushes
• Mod Podge
• Plastic Plates to use as palettes
• Scissors
• Sample cut-outs to trace if needed

I had set up a display of children's books on Henri Matisse. My library had a wonderful selection to chose from!  The title that I liked the most and pertained to our lesson was this book:

After I read the book to the kids, I brought out my laptop and showed them this video of Henri Matisse working.  The kids couldn't get over his large scissors!

I let the kids pick any colors that they wanted from my stack of colored cardstock.  Most did not have a problem jumping right in and cutting away.  I did have some cut-outs of organic shapes that I had made for students that seemed stuck but I only had one child use them.  Each shape was attached to the canvas via Mod Podge.  They used cut-up sponges to do this.  I have to emphasize to the kids that the Mod Podge would dry clear.

Here are some of the works that the students did:

Rebecca, age 10

Genivive, age 10

Lily, age 8

Joseph, age 8

Lynn, age 10

Joseph, age 8

If you are interested in learning more about Henri Matisse and what he dubbed "his second life", this short video gives some good background info.

Thanks for stopping by!