Rocket Through the Night by Annie Rogers

Skill Level: 2-5

Time Frame: 30-45 min

Goals

• To become familiar with both oil and chalk pastels and to practice blending techniques with them.
• To talk about the concept of negative space.
• To practice drawing simple silhouettes (or outlines.)

Materials

• Scrap cardstock
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Blue Painters Tape
• White cardstock or Pastel Paper 9X12
• Chalk Pastels
• Black Paper
• Scrap Colored Paper
• Oil Pastels
• Glue Stick

Steps

1. Begin by drawing some simple cloud shapes on the scrap cardstock, using pencil.   You will need about 4-5 clouds for your artwork.
2. Cut out your clouds.
3. Put a loop of painter’s tape on the back of each cloud, arrange, and stick to your white paper.
4. Use the chalk pastels to draw around your clouds, directly on your paper.  Use bright colors, and feel free to use more than one color.  You can even layer colors on top of one another.
5. Use your finger to spread out the chalk pastel, around our clouds.  Add more color and blend that too.
6. Fill in the rest of the space on the paper with darker pastels, again blending with your finger.  Mix and layer the pastel to give your sky interest and depth.
7. Remove your cloud shapes.  You will have created white space—or negative space where the clouds are in your sky.
8. Next choose a vehicle to appear in your night sky.  It could be a rocket ship, like the example, or it could be a plane or hot air balloon or a hanglider.  It could also be something totally out there like a pirate ship or a submarine or a bicycle.  Draw this vehicle, using pencil, onto your black paper, making sure that it will fit somewhere on your paper.
9. Cut out your vehicle.
10. If desired, cut some stars and a moon out of the scrap colored paper.
11. Using glue stick, glue on your vehicle and moon and stars on your pasteled paper.
12. Use oil pastels to further add depth to your sky, blending with your finger.  Also use oil pastels to define your clouds—give them a curved line or two in the negative space.

©2013 Arts For Life

Woven Heart by AFL Student Johnathan and Annie Rogers

Skill Level: 2-5

Time Frame: 30 minutes

Goals

• To learn about warm and cool colors.
• To learn how to use and blend oil pastels.
• To learn basic weaving techniques by using a simple material—paper.

Materials

• Colored Cardstock or Construction Paper
• Ruler
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Transfer Paper
• Painters Tape
• X-acto knife (teachers only)

Steps

1. Talk about warm and cool colors.  Select two pieces of colored paper—one that’s a cool color, and one that’s warm colored.
2. Use a ruler, pencil, and a pair of scissors to make one of your papers square (doesn’t matter which one.)  Depending on what size paper you start off with, your paper should be either 8½” or 9” square.
3. Use a pencil, ruler and scissors to make your second paper a compatible rectangle.  This rectangle should be as wide as your other square, but 1” shorter.  For instance if your square is 8½”, you should end up with a rectangle that is 7½”X 8½”.  If you start with a 9” square, you should have a rectangle that is 8”X9”.
4. Using a pencil, draw a heart on the smaller rectangle.  Make sure that it takes up most of the paper.
5. Stack the rectangle on top of the square, lining up the side edges, and centering it top to bottom with the larger square.  Secure with painter’s tape.
6. Slide a piece of transfer paper (face down!) in between the two papers.  Use pencil to trace over the lines of your heart.
7. Separate the two pieces of paper and remove the transfer paper.
8. Using oil pastel, color the heart on your warm-colored paper using warm colors.  Use as many different warm colors as you can, using your finger to blend them if desired.
9. Repeat step 9 using cool colors on the cool-colored paper.
10. Once you have finished coloring, use scissors to cut your smaller rectangle into horizontal strips about 1½” wide.  This doesn’t have to be exact, and actually it looks better and more interesting if the strips vary in width.  Try to keep your strips in order to make the weaving easier.  You may number them on the back, if that’s the easiest.
11. Meanwhile, the teacher should turn over the square to the back, and, using an x-acto knife, cut a series of vertical slits that begin and end about ¼” from the edge of the paper.  These should be spaced about 1½” apart (again, doesn’t have to be exact.)
12.   Weave the first cut strip of one paper through the slits of the other.  Push the strip so that it so it is all the way at the top (or bottom) of the slit.  Alternate starting with the over/under with each of the strips and work your way to the bottom of the paper.

©2013 Arts For Life

Paper Owl by Annie Rogers

Skill Level: 1-5

Time Frame: 30 minutes

Goals

• To practice scissor skills.
• To use materials that may otherwise be thrown away or recycled to create an original work of art.
• To talk about collage and to use a simple collage technique.

Materials

• Black Paper 9X12
• Paper Scraps, variety of colors and/or patterns
• Scissors
• Glue Stick
• Pencil (optional)

Steps:

1. Look through your bag or box of scrap papers, and choose several pieces to use for your collage.  They may be one color, or they may be all different colors, patterns, etc.
2. Use scissors to cut small triangles (2” or so) from your paper.  This is not an exact science; it’s a chance for younger kids to get used to some very simple scissor skills.  Cut 20-30 triangles.
3. Cut two large circles of the same color.  If you need to, you can draw the circles first with a pencil, but try not to use any templates or stencils.
4. Cut one or two pairs of smaller circles for the insides of the eyes.  Just make sure that each pair is smaller than they ones before it.
5. Cut one larger triangle to be the beak.
6. Begin gluing your pieces on to make the owl.  Start at the bottom of your paper with one triangle.  Glue it so that it is pointing up, with the flat part parallel with the bottom of the paper.  Glue two other triangles on either side of it, with their points facing down.
7. Toward the top of your paper, about 3” down, glue a row of triangles, all point-down across the width of your paper.
8. Glue triangles down between the top and bottom lines, overlapping your triangles so that there is not black paper showing through.
9. Glue two triangles on either side of your top lines, with their points facing up toward the upper corners of  your paper.
10. Glue the smaller circles onto the bigger ones, until you have two eyes.  Glue these on top of your overlapping triangles wherever you think the eyes should go.
11. Glue the beak in between the eyes.

Tweak It!

• You could use any animal shape with this technique—butterfly and turtle come to mind as easy options.  Also, you could just simplify it and do a simple shape with really little people.

©2013 Arts For Life

Artwork by Danielle Roman

Level: 2-5

Time: 30+ minutes

Goals:

• To introduce warm and cool colors.
• To show how warm colors project and cool colors recede.

Materials:

• White Cardstock/Drawing Paper
• Black Sharpie
• Pencil
• Warm and Cool Markers/Sharpies

Directions:

1. Draw large-scale, freeform designs with black sharpie on the white cardstock (I would discourage drawing in pencil first, as it is very time consuming to trace over all the designs in sharpie and tracing inhibits the spontaneity of the designs).
2. Disregarding the sharpie design, lightly write a name, initials, or positive word (four letter words work well) in large bubble letters in pencil overtop the design.
3. Color the designs inside the letters with warm colors.
4. Color the remaining background designs in cool colors.  The pencil lines will be hardly visible when the coloring is complete and the letters will seem to magically appear out of the designs on the paper!

Tweak it!

• Do a series of smaller panels with smaller scale designs on them.  Do one letter per panel and mount them on a black or white background page.

Bird by Danielle Roman

Level: 2-5

Time: 45+ minutes

Goals:

• To introduce primary and secondary colors.
• To demonstrate the basics of color mixing.

Definitions:

• Primary Colors: the group of colors (red, yellow, blue) from which all other colors can be made by mixing.
• Secondary Colors: Colors (orange, green, purple) produced by mixing two primary colors.

Materials:

• Wax Paper
• Masking Tape
• Tissue Paper (Bright Blue, Yellow, and Magenta)
• Liquid glue/Modge Podge/Gel Medium
• Water Cup
• Sponge Brush
• Hair Dryer
• Black Cardstock (2 Sheets)
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Template (Optional)
• Glue Stick

Directions:

1. Tear a piece of wax paper about 9”x12” and tape all four edges down flat to the table.
2. Cut 3-4 strips of each color tissue paper about 1-2 inches wide and about 10 inches long.  These colors will serve as the primary colors (the bright blue and magenta tissue papers work better than the dark blue and red tissue papers when overlapping them in the manner that this project requires.)
3. Pour a small amount of glue into the water cup and dilute about 1:1 with water.
4. Use the Sponge brush to paint a stripe of glue across the bottom of the wax paper. Lay a strip of tissue paper on the stripe of glue and use the sponge brush to paint another layer of glue on top of the tissue paper.
5. Repeat step 4 with a different color strip of tissue paper.  Position it just above the previous strip and be sure to overlap about one third of the previous strip. Where the two strips overlap, a secondary color will be created.  Continue in this manner until you have worked your way all the way across the tissue paper.
6. Take a piece of black cardstock and fold it in half.  Draw the outline of half of a bird, starting and ending along the fold of the paper.  Then draw a line parallel to the first about one half inch inside of it (it may be helpful to have a pre-made template for students to trace).
7. Cut along both lines and unfold.  You should have a continuous outline of a bird. Trace this bird onto another sheet of black cardstock and cut it out as well, leaving you with two identical bird outlines.
8. If the tissue paper is not dry, use a hair dryer to speed drying.  Then glue one of the black bird shapes onto the tissue paper collage using a glue stick.  Cut around the outside of the bird shape to remove any excess tissue paper. Then glue the second bird shape onto the back, aligning it with the first so that the tissue paper is sandwiched between the two bird shapes.
9. Display in the window!

Tweak It!

• Instead of a bird, make the hanging any other symmetrical shape (star, heart, butterfly, flower, etc.).
• Cut the tissue paper into squares, rather than strips, and collage them in any design desired, making sure to slightly overlap each piece to create secondary colors.  (Keep in mind that overlapping all three colors will result in a brownish color.)

©2013 Arts For Life