Watercolor Ice Painting Resists

This week the mixed-age art class worked on oil pastel and watercolor resists. The children began by drawing pictures with oil pastels.

When they were ready to start painting, I brought out a special surprise... watercolor ice paints! Now that the weather is warm, it's the perfect time to paint with ice. The night before, I froze liquid watercolor and craft sticks in an ice tray. By class time the next day, I had an exciting new medium to paint with.

Our outside activities included golf ball, car, dot, and roller painting- and of course lots of water play!

Summer Contact Paper Collage

This week the 1s/2s class celebrated summertime with a flower petal and shapes collage. I taped clear contact paper (sticky side up) down to the table and offered them petals, sequin shapes, and tissue  shapes to stick to the paper. I was inspired by the Artful Parent who recently used this method to make fairy wings!

The kids glammed up their work by adding plenty of glitter.

After the collages, I brought out some golf ball painting materials. The children caught on quickly how to shake the trays to create interesting lines on their paper. They had fun exploring the studio and periodically returning to the golf ball painting to do some more shaking.

Hard at work!

Summer Inspired Upcycled Collage

It finally feels like summer around here! After weeks of cold and rain, the summer heat has come around. I decided to celebrate this feeling with a bright, nature shape collage project for the mixed age class. I offered the children a sturdy poster board in a bright, summery yellow as a base. The collage pieces were made with paper shape punchers using scrap paintings that I otherwise would have recycled. Each shape is a beautiful work of art in itself! The children first glued down some butterfly and leaf shapes and then added sequins and glitter for a little pizazz. Some kids were really interested in squeezing a ton of glue on top of the shapes. When the glue dried, we found that the paint from the shape had bled out into the glue, creating swirls of transparent color.

Outside, I had a similar set up as last week (floor mural, easels, mixing table, etc.) with a different kind of water spray project as well as a dot painting table.

The second half of class was an open studio with water play outside and free choice inside.

I love summertime!

Printmaking and Open Studio

For the first class of our summer session, we worked on mono-type printmaking and stamping. We started off rolling out paint onto acrylic boxes and then using a cotton swab to draw a design. The mixed-age open studio class used large acrylic boxes as a base, while the 1s/2s class used small boxes to print fathers day cards.

We continued the theme of printmaking by using a variety of stamps. Some children used cookie cutters to stamp out shapes, while others used the letters DAD to add to their fathers day cards.

We also experimented with bubble wrap printmaking. The children painted the bubble wrap (which was taped to the acrylic easel) then pressed paper against it to make a print.

The 1s/2s class moved on to painting with fun tools and gathering new supplies from the shelf.

For the mixed-age class we had a large group of 11 kids, so while some children worked on printmaking inside the studio, others were busy at the five outside stations. These stations included a floor mural with gross-motor tools for painting...

ball painting...

easel painting...

a bleeding tissue mural collage with water spray bottles...

and a mixing table with sand and powered tempera paint.

And of course the studio eventually turned from a print-making station into a messy, fun, free-for-all!

Collaborative Canvas

As one of our final projects of the spring session, we created a collaborative canvas art piece. The children worked on the canvas in 7 phases, beginning with this picture of the canvas on the floor. To preserve each phase of the work, I used painters tape to cover up some of the areas on the canvas each time a new group worked on it.

For the second phase, I brought the canvas to a block party in my neighborhood. The kids had a blast going at it with long brushes, rollers, and child-sized mops and brooms.

For our final week of spring classes, each group contributed to the canvas in different ways. Some classes worked on the floor with bouncy bean bags and long tools, while other groups worked on it vertically, attached to an easel.

Each day when the canvas was dry, I added more tape (often with help from Karuna and Aaron). For this project, the tape was placed randomly (except for the small heart at the top), but next time I want to try doing a more planned out design!

The tempera paints don't keep their true color when painted over, but often turn muddy after many layers. So I decided to let the oldest class use non-toxic acrylic paint to get back to some brighter colors add more texture.

After some painting, the kids decided to stick collage materials onto the canvas... brilliant!

The next day, I wanted to preserve the collage materials from the previous class, so I taped up a large piece of paper over that section of the painting.

I realized that the kids enjoyed having one area that was a blank canvas, so I taped up another piece of paper for the final class. 

After 7 phases painting and taping, I spent about 2 hours peeling off all of the tape (much of which was hidden under all those layers!) And here is the final piece...