I heart Jim Dine

Jim Dine
American artist, liked to use familiar objects in his work, like hearts!  I thought this would be a great artist to talk about around Valentines Day! 


Materials needed:
-Black construction paper
-Pink and White crayons
-Watercolor paper
-Watercolor paint in red, orange, purple
-Glue
-Scissors

Directions:
1.  First have the kids fill up their entire sheet of black paper with rows of little x's and o's
2.  Next have them fold a piece of watercolor paper and draw half of a heart, then cut it out.  I did a demo then step by step we drew the heart then cut.  You could also opt to use a template.
3.  Using watercolors, paint the entire heart
4.  Glue heart to black paper

What a sweet piece of artwork!  Just in time for Valentines Day!  Would make a great gift!

Laurel Burch Cats

Laurel Burch was a self-taught American painter/folk artist.

She died young at age 62 from a bone disease but even during the time when she was sick and had to paint in bed or from her wheelchair, she never stopped creating.  She said, "I refuse to have anything in my life that I can't turn around into something magical and beautiful.  I just refuse."

She has a great imagination.  Joy and happiness came through in her paintings with her bold lines and bright colors.  Her cats are so fun and whimsical!  My students love her work and they made some great versions of their own cats too!  Check this out...

Materials needed:

-White paper

-Colored paper (We had a pad of donated scrapbooking paper that had awesome colors and patterns)

-Crayons

-Scissors

-Glue

Directions:

1.  Students followed my step by step instructions for drawing the cat face.  (step by step tutorial coming soon)

2.  Color in the cat face, encourage different bright colors

3.  Select 2 fun pieces of colored paper, fold them into a triangle and cut them in half.

4.  Glue 2 halves onto a whole piece (this is your background)

5.  Cut out the cat face and glue it on the background

6.  Add lines, whiskers, and anything you feel it needs.

Monet's Waterlillies

Inspired by Monet's Waterlillies paintings, we wanted to create our own!

Materials needed:

-Heavy weight water color paper

-Tempera paint, only blues, greens, and white for mixing

-Paint brushes

-Green construction paper

-Tissue paper

-Pencils

-Glue

Directions:

1.  Show examples of Monet's Waterlillies.  Talk about the softness of the paintings, soft edges, soft colors.

2.  Have the students paint the water first.  Encourage color mixing; shades of blues, greens.

3.  While the paper is drying, have students draw and cut out 3 lily pads.  You can offer them a template to trace, if needed. 

4.  For the lily pad flowers, have little scraps of tissue paper that students can wrap around the eraser end of a pencil, dip in a little glue and then stick it to the middle of the lily pad.   A few tissue paper flowers per lily pad is perfect.

5.  Once painting is dry, then glue the lily pads to the painting and voila!   A mini-masterpiece!