We had fun with this one. We used plain old Haynes t-shirts and inked on a design then set the group loose with a variety of fabric paints and the instructions to add an art phrase and their name. Of course several had to add a LOT more and so it went. I also included a shot of our great name tags here from yesterday.
We always spend some time in formal drawing and were able to pull quite a few books from the library to use as a guide (and introduce the group to them for possible check-out.) We did lots of sea life, monsters and aliens to get ready for the remaining projects. The kids jumped right in and soon were asking for more paper and the books for free draw times.
I like to use materials that are a little less traditional for kids to introduce them to the possibilities in art and metallic paint and dark surfaces fall into that category. I really appreciate my friends who helped out with the paints too. We look at around a dozen slides every day to share our tastes in art and examine them but also to supply concrete examples to use in their own paintings. There are so many good ones in this group but the fish and birds turned out especially well.
Click on the slide show below to share our day.
We had fun with this one. We used plain old Haynes t-shirts and inked on a design then set the group loose with a variety of fabric paints and the instructions to add an art phrase and their name. Of course several had to add a LOT more and so it went. I also included a shot of our great name tags here from yesterday.
This project is always a hit as we give kids much larger surfaces than they ususally get to have and tell them to use any of the brushes and tools they have been introduced to on the subject they pick. We have a large selection of brushes compliments of my painting friends and left-overs from other classes. We also had the pouncers, corks and palette knives to use in addition to forks (to make wavy lines.) Again a number of the painings were inspired by the slide show earlier in the day. Hopefully some of these will turn up in their art show.
We took the camp on the road this week and what a great group! We started the week with pastels which to most kids are just chalk until they get the good colors and dark paper. We made name tags to get to know each other then launched into the first "painting" project--glue set pastel beach scene. To do this the kids first draw their picture onto white charcoal paper--it works better as it has a bit more tooth--then either dip the pastel pieces into school glue or paint sections with the glue and rub over them with the pastels. This lets them use several colors to do shading and cover any areas that are not totally gluey with a bit of glue to seal it. Not bad at all!
Our last project was to create a dimensional picture using palette knives and texture paste. We also got to use finger pouncers which are very popular. I did the background of greenish blue on squares of foam core board before class then lead them through drawing a leaf from the veins out, painting it with a palette knife and adding the veins back with the edge of the knife. We then added stems for the dandelions and used the pouncers to create the fluffy look. 
