Over, Under, Over, Under

Levi repeated, "Over, under, over, under," as he wove his paper together this morning. He worked deliberately to make sure that certain parts of the painting would show, sometimes turning a strip around or sliding it up to make sure that it revealed just the right part. I LOVE the results. I have to admit that I wasn't so sure about it yesterday when I saw the way the sheets of paper looked, but they dried nicely and the results are beautiful. The colors really POP!

I matted his finished work with black and white and then put it in a black frame. This piece just might get a spot on our dining room wall.


Check out yesterday's post about the beginning of this project and a link back to the idea source.

Looking forward to spring break which officially starts this afternoon. I plan to get his bed moved which will allow him more room around his studio. (See photo in this previous post.) Hopefully that will make it easier for him to work and create there.

Sharon

Color - Primary and Secondary

Today we studied color. We talked about primary and secondary colors and did a little mixing with watercolors to complete a color wheel.



Then Levi painted 2 sheets of watercolor paper, one with warm colors and one with cool colors. Tomorrow he will get to cut them into strips and weave them together. I got the idea for the color weaving project from Art Projects for Kids, click here to go right to the project.

As soon as he finished the painting he went off to do a little more origami.

More photos will come tomorrow after the project is completed.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Sharon

Name Creature

This afternoon we combined some math with our art. I asked Levi what he knew about symmetry and found out he really didn't know what it is. (I remember that Cole impressed me with this word and concept at an early age after he learned it on OPB, watching Cyber Chase.)

I found this fun interactive video on symmetry and we watched it together. Then we moved on to our art project which I found here, at a blog called That Little Art Teacher. Levi worked at learning to make a fancy cursive "L" because the capital "L" in the italic cursive that he is learning really isn't as interesting.

Once he got the hang of it, he folded an 8x10 paper in half lengthwise and wrote his name so that it was resting on the fold. He then traced it with a black oil pastel and then refolded the paper and rubbed hard to transfer the name to the other side of the paper and then traced over that portion. Then the fun really began. He decorated up his creature, making sure to keeps things symmetrical. If he added to one side he had to add the same to the other side. If you look closely you can find Levi's name in this creature.

Levi's completed project.

Can you see my name in there? I took the easy way out and added
my background with Photoshop after scanning my creature.
I must say that his background looks a lot more interesting than mine.

Have an awesome weekend,

Sharon

Levi's first watercolor painting

This was Levi's first ever watercolor painting, done at age 6.

I thought he might like to try watercolors so I just told him to think about something he would like to paint. I think that he chose birds because he was sitting at the dining room table and we get a lot of birds in the trees just outside.

I instructed him to draw lightly on the paper with a pencil so that he would know where to paint. If I remember correctly I also encouraged him to add leaves to his branches, but other than that he came up with the composition on his own. When it was time to paint, I gave him a few pointers about mixing colors and about wetting the paper first if he wanted the color to flow more in some areas.

As kids will do, he gave me quite an explanation of his picture when he was done. He was sure to point out that the father, brother and baby boy birds were the brightly colored birds and the mother and baby girl were the brown birds.

Thank goodness I had scanned his art right away as the original is quite faded now. I learned the hard way that watercolors fade quickly when they are in the bright light.

Levi was awarded a blue ribbon at our county fair in 2008 for this painting.

Sharon

Hearts inspired by Jim Dine

After seeing many beautiful hearts inspired by the work of Jim Dine as I cruised the blogs last week I just KNEW I had to do some with Levi. I must say he wasn't thrilled about doing a heart but went along with the project and then enjoyed the process.

I cut a heart from a piece of file folder and then traced it onto the center of a 7.5 inch square of watercolor paper. Then we used crayons to layer our colors on for the hearts. We layered cool and warm colors. I just kept piling the layers on mine, trying to fill in most of the little divets in the paper. We used an old rag to buff the surface so that you couldn't see individual crayon strokes. Mine got pretty glossy because of all the layers of crayon.

Then we added the watercolor background. I used some rubber cement to mask areas of my background between colors. Levi chose to just layer up his colors. We created the idea of movement with our brushstrokes. Lastly, Levi added the black outline to bring definition back to his heart. I matted them onto black and then white to fit a 10x10 frame. (I thought I had bought 8x8 frames, but found out they were larger so added the white.)





I love the way they came out and will proudly display these in our home.

You can look at some of the sites that inspired me to do this project:

• Art Projects for Kids
• another from Art Projects for Kids
• Use Your Colored Pencils
• another from Use Your Colored Pencils
• The Elementary Art Room
  

Sharon