Apple Hill Family: Art and Children

Some of my "pieces" from my art class
(this was a required class for my program,
with this class and with the Yoga class I took for my PE requirement, it was like someone shoving a big slab of thick moist chocolate fudge cake at me and saying, "here, have this cake, and you have to eat it too")

"torn paper art"

my piece is titled "The Piggies Got at the Cupcakes"

Our instructor demonstrated possible art processes we could do with various ages of children and we came up with lots of variations. By showing us the supplies available to use for a particular process and then just diving right in, casually making her piece, and explaining with words very little, we saw how simple it can be to "teach" art. Small children just want use of the supplies and a space and time to have at it. Then you can work in little lessons like:

how to properly and safely use scissors and practicing cutting straight and curved lines

what happens when we mix red and yellow? blue and yellow? red and blue? red, yellow and blue?

if we're making a structure, and it keeps falling over, what can we do to stabilize it?

sculpture with rolled newspaper

(my bicycle had to have a pretty major kickstand to keep it upright)

She also taught us a few drawing and painting techniques and simple ways to display our (and our future students') artwork in ways that make each unique piece special. Like cut various shapes in various sizes and letting kids pick a few and trace them and use them as their format - so they experience something other than the plain 8 1/2 by 11 paper.

curved-straight scribble technique

and layered varied formats

after I got going on this, it reminded me of my brother's superheroes - so this is Super Scribbler

transfering - we learned to trace existing drawings with tracing paper or tissue paper and then flip the tissue over onto our paper (so the pencil marks are touching it) and placing what we want where we want them, and then drawing right on top of the traced drawing (on the opposit side), which "pushes" or transfers the pencil marks onto our paper. This way you "practice" drawing.

tracing and then transfering Jess and Jacob

"drawing blind" - look at the hand you don't use to write with, do NOT look at your other hand or your paper, now draw the hand your looking at, don't look at your hand that is drawing or the paper until your finished

(mine's missing some fingers - oops)

I designed and drew a lot of paper doll clothes once upon a time. As you can see, I'm not confident at drawing heads, faces, hands, or feet, so I just left them off.

(this is the cloat I made to go with the dress Marcia found for Jessica)

I also love to design floorplans. I start by imagining how I want main areas to be arranged, what I want together, what would be open or connected with other areas, and what I want seperated.

Then I arrange the walls around the spaces.
And I love making areas symetrical,
and I'm on a "make everything fit into 4 foot sections" kick lately

just a flower, but I used a metalic silver which I thought really turned out well - but you can't really see it that well here

a painting on a day when I was sad, mad, depressed, and frustrated that the world was getting buried in snow AGAIN

and a painting a few days later when I was happy that the sun had returned to us and it looked like Spring was actually coming

We also demonstrated art processes to the class based on famous artists,

my group flipped through the book and we all got very happy and warm and fuzzy over the Mondrian page. (Here are samples of his work and for samples of things inspired him click here and here). Don't all the perfectly straight lines and all of the wonderful perpendicularness in his work just make you tear up with joy?!?! we made several samples using various supplies - making lines with a straight edge on plain paper or using graph paper, using markers, paints, crayons, electrical tape,

and my samples using tissue paper to make "stained glass windows"

Someday I want to recreate this one using Legos

Two of the groups demonstrated fun with splatter techniques

they splatter painted objects, like a lamp shade, and huge surfaces of paper - makes a great backdrop or background for other work - and they used various things to splatter the paint with - paintbrush, toothbrush, sponge,

and this was my favorite - tape a piece of paper in a box/container, put a few drops of paint in the container, add some marbles and/or jacks, put the lid on tight and SHAKE until you have your "masterpiece"

Another group did a process of gluing various 3-dementional things on pieces of cardboard to make a design, then covering it in aluminum foil and pressing it in tight up against everything, then painting the foil surface and then wiping off the paint on the raised surfaces leaving them silver.

Around the border of my long rectangle of cardboard I cut off the top smooth layer revealing the corgated inner part, I used thick yarn to write out "family" in cursive and glued it to the cardboard, I used a chunky heart to dot the "i" and painted it black. It was turning out pretty well but I had trouble removing the paint off the raised letters because the yarn was soft and moved quite a bit and the paint was still tacky when I wrapped it and took it home and it slid around in the van (wrapped in butcher paper so it didn't paint the van black at least) and the butcher paper stuck to it and later it got thrown away - I think it would work well using tubing instead of yarn

Another group did drawing the shadowed parts of a face. This was so cool - a classmate demonstrated and she never sketched the "outline," she just made the shadowed parts and darker places - I didn't get it quite right, but it was awesome to watch her, and the other demonstration our instructor did