SMMART ART: Crayon Drizzle

We have had a wonderful and successful Summer Reading Group once again this summer!  There were 13 weeks of summer and each Monday, one of 13 Moms hosted our kids to read a book and share activities centered around that book.  Our kids did so many fun things this summer, including a teddybear picnic, making homemade icecream, meeting a real secret agent, learning about earthquake safety, making Native American birch bark buckets to collect maple syrup...You can read about past summer reading group experiences.

One mom shared this fun craft with the group. (We actually split up into a younger reading group P-2 and an older reading group 3-6grade since we had so many children who wanted to participate)

She hotglued crayons across the top of a thin canvas board.  You could use cardboard or the inside portion of a cereal box too.  Then she used a hairdryer to heat the crayons....and the wax drizzled to form a design.  She said that the kids were really excited about watching the colors weep and combine.

SMMART ART: Reverse Glass Painting

"Reverse painting on glass is an art form consisting of applying paint to a piece of glass and then viewing the image by turning the glass over and looking through the glass at the image. Verre Églomisé is a commonly used term to refer to the art of cold painting and gilding on the back of glass. In German it is also known as 'hinterglasmalerei.'  This art form has been around for many years. It was widely used for sacral paintings since Middle Ages. The most famous was the art of icons in the Byzantine Empire.

 The painting can be realistic or abstract. Realistic reverse paintings are more challenging to create as one must, for example, in painting a face, to put the pupil of an eye on the glass before the iris, exactly the opposite of normal painting. If this is neglected the artist will not be able to correct the error as they will not get in between the glass and the paint already applied. No such care need be taken with the abstract form, but with this form there is not a good idea how the piece will look like until it is finished. This process is not like stained or leaded glass work in that it is not intended to hang in a window with light coming through the piece. Hanging on a wall, framed or unframed, with a lot of light directed towards the piece provides best viewing." (Wikipedia Reverse Painting on Glass)

Do you have an old picture frame?  We did our own modified version of reverse glass painting.  First we used Sharpie markers and drew the picture outlines and inside details that we wanted to portray on the glass.  Then we painted over the top of the sharpie with clear paint, so you could see the details of the sharpie underneath the color of the clear paint.  Ours could actually be used as a sort of stained glass art.

Roxanne, the producer of "Good Things Utah", told me how she uses clear Elmer's glue and food coloring to create a clear paint that she uses to paint pictures on her windows.  Crafty girl, that Roxanne; and if you ever need anything "Blinged out", she is the queen of "Blinging" things!  She "Blings" everything from keys to use as pendants, to hats, to her office stapler.  But I digress...

SMMART ART: Huichol Gods Eye

Another yarn craft from the Huichol people of Mexico is called a "God's Eye".  You may remember making these at summer camps.

"A God's eye is a yarn weaving and a Huichol spiritual object.
The Ojo de Dios or God's eye is a ritual tool, magical object, and cultural symbol evoking the weaving motif and its spiritual associations. For the Huichol peoples of western Mexico, the God's Eye is symbolic of the power of seeing and understanding that which is unknown and unknowable, The Mystery. The four points represent the elemental processes earth, fire, air, and water.
The Ojo de Dios, or God's Eye, is a simple or complex weaving made across two or more sticks and is thought to have originated with the Huichol Indians of Jalisco, Mexico. The Huichol call their God's eyes Sikuli, which means "the power to see and understand things unknown." When a child is born, the central eye is woven by the father, then one eye is added for every year of the child's life until the child reaches the age of five." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God%27s_eye)

You need two sticks or popsicle sticks.  I think that using actual sticks seems more indiginous and authentic.  Wrap the sticks with yarn to secure them before you have your child start yarn wrapping...this will save a lot of frustrated little hands.

Wrap over stick 1, under stick 2, over stick 3 and under stick 4...continue wrapping in the same motion.  Make sure the yarn is wrapped beside previous row so the yarn spreads out flat.  When you run out of one color, you can tie another color and continue.  You can use a multicolored yarn for an easy way to get a variety of colors.

Another way I used to do...Wrap all the way around stick 1, then drag the yarn to stick 2 and wrap all the way around stick 2...then all the way around stick 3, then all the way around stick 4....so you have a full wrap around each stick...it doesn't bunch up as much this way.

Shimmer yarn is always fun to use or try some pastels for the Spring!

SMMART ART: Yarn Art

I saw a fun idea for yarn art on www.thatartistwoman.org and thought that we'd use this style of yarn art by the Huichol Mexican people for our spring art class...but we would do Yarn Eggs!

"Huichol art broadly groups the most traditional and most recent innovations in the folk art and handcrafts produced by the Huichol people, who live in the states of Jalisco and Nayarit in Mexico. The unifying factor of the work is the colorful decoration using symbols and designs which date back centuries. The most common and commercial successful products are “yarn paintings” and objects decorated with small commercially produced beads. Yarn paintings consist of commercial yarn pressed into boards coated with wax and resin and are derived from a ceremonial tablet called a nearika. The Huichol have a long history of beading, making the beads from clay, shells, corals, seeds and more and using them to make jewelry and to decorate bowls and other items. The “modern” beadwork usually consists of masks and wood sculptures covered in small, brightly colored commercial beads fastened with wax and resin." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huichol_art)

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:StringArt1MAPDF.JPG)

First cut out an egg shape from a cereal box.  You can paint the shape a pastel color for a nice background color.  Then use tacky glue and make a glue perimeter around the cardboard egg. 

Start to wrap pieces of egg colored yarn around and around...starting from the edge and all the way into the center.  Or you can lay down a yarn design across the egg horizontally and use a new color every so often for a striped egg.   We had precut strands of yarn for the art class.  This way, the yarn wasn't too long to handle and the students could use a variety of colors in their egg yarn art.

Now paint a backdrop for your yarn egg.  What setting would you paint?   A nest?  a grassy field?  a few chicks?

More tacky glue... and glue your yarn egg onto the backdrop. 

SMMART ART (craft): Thanksgiving Pilgrim and Wampanoag Placecards

 Shhhhhhh!  These are a secret!  They are going to be the life of the party for Thanksgiving Dinner!  These cute little Pilgrims and Wampanoag will be tucked under a twine bow and secured to a dinner napkin to indicate where everyone should sit at the table on Thursday. 

Pilgrims need a pilgrim hat or bonnet and a large collar.  Wampanoag puppets can be decked out with a feather atop the head and some fringe somewhere.  Some puppets are holding corn, a cornucopia or a turkey leg for extra humor.

Afterwards, the kiddos can use these as puppets to create their own Thanksgiving stories.  You can bring a Mayflower and a turkey puppet, and maybe an ear of corn puppet to add to the play props.

These did take a lot of work, but you could also find a Pilgrim and Wampanoag clipart figure and just paste on people's faces.  I love how these turned out...here are two of my favorites...

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

SMMART ART (craft): Thankful Turkey Legs

My daughter found this little Thanksgiving craft in the recent FamilyFun Magazine.  The girls had fun stuffing their paper sacks with grocery bags.  Then they twisted the bottoms and we wrapped masking tape all around the bottom.  The magazine suggested you put a napkin around the bottom, and they made the top part look more like a turkey leg...but our version was probably easier with just using the masking tape.

Then the girls wanted to write and draw some things that they were grateful for on the turkey legs.  They had fun hiding their turkey legs and having their sisters try to find them.

SMMART ART: Body Creations

Four high school summers, I had the amazing opportunity to attend Summer Institute for the Arts, focusing on drama.  Our instructors shared many activities to help us young students learn to control our bodies and become very comfortable in moving them. 

In this activity, your child will use his imagination as he molds his body to create different objects.  If there are siblings, pile them on for more eleaborate body creations.  

Make a space for your child to move and to lie on the ground to recreate shapes.  "Make a black cat."  "Become a pumpkin."  "Create a haunted house".  Take photos with your digital camera and show your children their body creations afterwards.

The choreographer for Disney on Ice Celebrates 100 Years of Magic (in Salt Lake Nov. 14-18) helped to choreograph the ice skating part of the 2002 Winter Olympics...right here in Salt Lake City!  She says “It’s always interesting to try and create new shapes within the skating language. You can only do that through experimentation.”  This makes me think of the elaborate formations they create using so many ice skaters.  Think about creating elaborate shapes as you photograph your childrens' body creations.

CHOREOGRAPHER SARAH KAWAHARA:

A LOOK AT HER VISION FOR DISNEY ON ICE CELEBRATES 100 YEARS OF MAGIC

The on-ice work of Emmy^® Award-winning and Olympic choreographer Sarah Kawahara takes audiences on an unforgettable, imaginative journey down a memory lane of classic and new Disney stories in Disney On Ice celebrates 100 Years of Magic. Produced by Feld Entertainment, this show highlights Kawahara’s clever, innovative and evocative style, which ranges from romantic and playful to dramatic and heroic.

Kawahara, who won two Emmy^® Awards for the skating segments in the 2002 Winter Olympic Opening Ceremonies and Scott Hamilton: Upside Down,defines choreography for figure skating as “the fusion of music with interpretive movement and the technical elements of skating. It is more than just skating. You define what you want to say and how you want to say it.”Indeed, she takes great pride in her work and has a very clear vision of what she wants each of her projects to accomplish.

Growing up in Montreal, Canada, Kawahara expressed her creativity through piano, violin, ballet, jazz, drama and figure skating. Today, her curiosity, openness and holistic approach can be seen in all aspects of her work. For example, Kawahara feels it is vital to meld the basic components of costume, set, lights, music and skating so they come together seamlessly as a whole experience.

She is also keenly observant and nurturing when working with her impressive roster of international figure skaters. “I really work off the talent of the individual skater to tap into the inner sense of who they are and their own body rhythms,” she explains. “I blend what I have with their strengths and arrive at a new and different place for both of us.”

Kawahara is known for incorporating set pieces into her choreography. “I like to have skaters go in or through the props rather than just working in front of a set. It gives the production more dimension,” she explains.

Speaking about the broad spectrum of her art, Kawahara says, “It’s always interesting to try and create new shapes within the skating language. You can only do that through experimentation.” She adds, “You must grab and hold the attention of the audience…take them with you on a fantastic journey.”

SMMART Art: Kabooky Heads

Well, that's what we call them...Kabooky heads... little shrunken heads for Halloween.

So, we made our fabulous dried apple heads, adorned with beads and hair and hung them up over our porch front entrance.  They looked fabulous...until the yellow jackets decided to LOVE them, carve them out like a cave and reside in them.  I tied a grocery bag around each head to trap in the yellow jackets, then cut the string they hung on and tossed them into the yard til the swarms of yellow jackets died.  YIKES!

This was another attempt at Kabooky Heads..certain to not be bothered by pests!

Stuff a pantyhose sock with a handful of cottonballs.  Tie off the top. Then use thread and needle to pucker sew in eyeballs.  Just sew a little bunch of pantyhose and cotttonball and then send the needle to the back of the head and pull taught and make a knot.  The eyeball will sink into the head.  Then stitch on a mouth.  Tug at the cottonballs to make the nose protrude a bit.  There you have your Kabooky Head.

Now, let your darlings decorate and adorn the scary little heads with beads and jewels and yarn hair.

SMMART ART: Color Mixing

My girls taught me a fun way to learn about color mixing...Red and Blue make Purple!

This summer has been filled with "cool pops".  The girls eat up the frozen fructose corn syrup :) and leave the melted liquid behind.  Then they pour their liquid into each others' plastic cool pop sleeve.  They make all kinds of colors.  Just today my little 3 year old held her red pop and told her blue pop holding sister that she wanted to make purple!  I was pretty surprised that I hadn't come up with that idea.

SMMART ART:

Robert Delaunay

"The French painter Robert Delaunay began his artistic career as an apprentice to a stage designer in 1902. In 1904, he turned to painting, initially in the style of Impressionism, but soon moved away from more traditional practices in order to explore the abstract qualities of colour. By 1905 he was painting in large patches of bright colour in the manner of the Fauves. During the period 1908-10, he made his own contribution to Analytical Cubism by producing Cubist-style works with vivid colours instead of the fashionable browns and greys of Picasso (1881-1973) and Braque (1882-1963). His subjects also differed: he chose dynamic urban imagery rather than the more conventional but static still-life forms. This is exemplified in his series of pictures of the Eiffel Tower, such as The Eiffel Tower and The Red Tower (1912).

 Delaunay's style at this time featured loosely painted patches of rainbow colours laid out in overlapping planes of contrasting or complementary hues, which the art critic Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) interpreted as having a 'musical effect' and dubbed it Orphism or Orphic Cubism. (Orpheus was a mythological musician of ancient Greece.)" (www.visual-arts-cork.com)

"Aprons on" for our formal art class... in the style of Robert Delaunay's Orphism.  We tried some different techniques.    The first technique aimed to replicate his "The Eiffel Tower".

Each child was given a half piece of poster paper.  Then they were told to lay a smaller piece of paper on the posterboard and paint a building so that only half of the building showed up on the posterboard.  The smaller paper helped to create a stark line of nothingness and only half the building.  Then the artist continued to paint the other half of the building on the posterboard, but so it didn't quite line up.   Some children painted buildings, others painted half-shapes and half-objects.  This is how we attempted Robert Delaunay's Orphism technique. 

After the posterboard painting was dry, we went outside and laid cut out shapes on top of the pictures.  Some shapes were cut from cardstock and some were cut from shelf liner (it has teeny holes- you can pick up a roll at the dollar store).  We spray painted black on top of the shapes that were laying on top of the artwork.  When the shapes were removed, there were patches of black, spotted black from the shelf liner, and patches of white where the original artwork showed through.

My favorite piece of artwork was of Rapunzel's Tower.  Half of the posterboard was left blank and the shelf-liner paper was placed in the blank area.  The end result showed Rapunzel's tower with  lanterns floating in the night sky.  Very creative!

SMMART ART:

Chilren's Artwork Solution

Oh my goodness!  We have a lot of artwork that pours out from the girls' imaginations...at least 5 new creations a day! 

I collect all of their artwork into a folder and later I choose the best pieces to save in plastic slips in a three ring binder.

...the rest...gets displayed on the bedroom door or recycled into cards of thanks, pictures to friends and family...and the recycling bin.

I just found a great way to brighten a day with all of the artwork that your child creates!!!!!!

 Color A Smile collects crayon drawings from school children.
Every month we distribute these drawings to Nursing Homes,
Meals on Wheels Programs, and Individuals all across the country.
Our goal is to make people smile!

Instructions to Young Artists

• Choose cheerful, colorful themes. (Avoid "Get Well")
• Do not put a date on any drawing.
• Use crayon, marker, or colored pencil.
• Do not use glitter, paint or paste.
• Sign the front of the drawing with your first name and age.
• Use one side of the paper only. (No fold over cards)
• Use standard 8 1/2 X 11 letter size paper. 
• Mail completed drawings to:
  Color A Smile
  P O Box 1516
  Morristown, NJ 07962-1516

(http://www.colorasmile.org/artist.html)

SMMART ART:

Cascarones

My daughter brought home a little book for reading practice, called Cascarones are Fun!  Since Easter is approaching, we thought this would be a perfect activity for our "formal" monthly art class.  Aprons on!

It seems that Marco Polo brought the first cascarones from Asia.  They were filled with powder or spices.  Now they are filled with confetti and small toys.  They are to be cracked open over someone's head.  Cascarones are fun for holidays and celebrations. 

First we tapped holes throught the eggshell on the bottom of the eggs.  Then we shook out the white and yolk into a bowl.  We rinsed the inside of the eggs and let them dry.  Fill the insides of the eggs with confetti.  Using a small paper wrapped into a funnel made the egg filling a lot easier.

Cut out small pieces of tissue paper that are large enough to cover the hole in the shell.  Brush a glue wash onto the perimeter of the shell hole and place the tissue paper on top.  Brush the tissue paper down with glue wash to keep the paper on the egg.  Let the hole-covered-eggs dry.

Make a Cascarone work-station by placing the dried eggs into an empty egg carton, place a brush in the lid and a small cup of gluewash beside carton.  Place any desired embellishments inside the carton lid.

We cut down the carton pockets to make a stand for our cascarones while they were being embellished.

Now, decorate your Cascarones with glitter and glue, tissue paper hearts, sequence and jewels.  You can even make your own Cascarones Character!

We are going to hide our Cascarones for our family Easter Hunt and then crack 'em open!

SMMART ART:

Origami

Origami was passed on through oral tradition for many years in Japan. Ori=paper and gami=folding. Origami has traditions in the Arab world, Spain, China and South America. Since it was Valentine's Day recently, we formed a very simple Heart Origami. You can find detailed photo directions at http://www.origami-instructions.com/easy-origami-heart.html

Then we created easy lotus blossoms. You can find the detailed photo directions at http://www.origami-instructions.com/origami-lotus-blossom.html

I thought it might be fun to learn napkin origami that our kids could use when they set the dinner table. You can find an amazing variety of napkin art online. We did a few simple designs:
http://www.napkinfoldingguide.com/24-lily/ and
http://www.marthastewart.com/272599/three-easy-napkin-folds

SMMART ART:

Kandinsky



Art class at home.  I was thinking it might be a fun thing to have an "official" art class once a month at home.  The girls put on their little aprons, and with a little prep from mom before, we had a nice little art class this month.

Speaking of cute aprons.. My sweet friend Teresa gave me a darling birthday gift this year...my very own apron!!!  I love the way it twirls and makes me look instantly fashionable.  Teresa is a very generous lady and her heart goes into each apron.  She started pouring her heart into making aprons for her friends as a way to break out of her "shell" and be a better friend.  Teresa says she can't put a price on friendship or what these aprons have done for her, so...for every apron she sells, all the proceeds go into materials to make baby blankets for the hospital NICU and other service oriented projects.  That's one amazing lady! You can support her service by purchasing an apron ($25 adult apron/ $15 kid apron).  She even makes suspender aprons for boys and men (see the UofU apron?)  Teresa.Perfili@aggiemail.usu.edu

So..back to our Kandinsky art lesson:  First we laid on the floor while I played different types of music.  "What does this music make you think of?  How does it make you feel?"
Then we learned a little about Wassily Kandinsky (http://www.biography.com/people/wasily-kandinsky-9359941) and how his possible synaesthesia allowed him to appreciate sound and colors with two or more senses simultaneously.  He could see the colors of music and could hear colors.  He sometimes called his artwork his "improvisations" or "compositions".  We observed some his artwork and talked about what Abstract Art is.  We talked about his famous circles and a way to remember these is to think of the top of a can for Kandinsky.  Kandinsky felt that the circle was the most peaceful shape and represented the human soul.

Art Project #1: We sat at the table and were given pencils to draw as they were moved by the classical Chopin playing in the background.  Then the girls used watercolors to complete their works.

Art Project #2:  I gave each girl a half a piece of posterboard.  They each got their own bowl of gluewash (elmers glue and water to thin out) and a brush.  I laid out onto the table lots of shapes cut from tissue paper.  The girls brushed their glue wash onto the posterboard and layered shapes into concentric "Kandinsky Circles" or even squares or other shapes.  They had fun creating their own little masterpieces.

Complete the fun with Kandinsky snacks... concentric circles of course! Crackers and circle cheese slices, orange slices and pear rounds...

"Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul". -Wassily Kandinsky

What other ways have you shared Kandinsky art with your children?  Let me know in the comments below!
SMMART MATH:  You could share a little geometry lesson in circles with your child.  "What is the radius of a circle? What is the diameter?"  You can measure the radius and diameter of each concentric circle.
"Let's measure the circumference."  Wrap the circle with a string and measure the lenth of the string.