we are hunkering down at our house, watching the wind push around the leaves and preparing for the serious hurricane sandy. so, I thought it might be a good time to post a stuck-at-home type of project from our summer art week.
we used a great new book, art treasury by rosie dickens, which is chock full of kid-friendly art projects that are inspired by famous artists. each project is a different style and uses easy to find supplies. I am totally smitten with this book. love, love, love it. the projects aren’t too advanced and the book uses a variety of techniques that keep them interesting and looking good.
we set to work right away on the kandinsky project, mostly because we had all the supplies already.
I prepped for the project by dividing a large sheet of white paper into 6 equal sections; and set out the oil pastels and watercolors alongside big paintbrushes.
I showed them the kandinsky picture and we discussed how drawing oil pastel circles would show through even when covered with watercolor and then they set off to color.
I never really know when they are going to respond to a project as is and when they are going to take it in a different direction…or if they are just going to walk away, which is fine but kind of disappointing to be honest about it. as it turns out with this one, they pretty much followed it to the letter and enjoyed that. it was fun for them to watch the watercolor transform their coloring but still maintain its color.
little J was efficient and quick about it but concentrated enough that his little tongue peeked out of the side of his mouth. I love that. C, on the other hand, was very precise (as always) and concentrated on making uniform circles and then experimented with watercolors. the best part is that they both look nice regardless of the different approaches. yay for an age and ablity-friendly art activity!
and, yes, that bottom one is mine….of course I participate! in fact, I’m almost always the one left at the table after the boys have moved back to racing cars. it’s nice to engage in some creative making for no reason sometimes. please tell me I’m not alone in that…
[…] I’ve gabbed about this before when we had our kandinsky project but we really like this book. I heard from some folks that it […]