Fun with chalk pastels

When you are studying the arctic, you have to talk about the Aurora Borealis. It is also something which lends itself to a cool art project. Plus I found instructions for how to make drawings of the northern lights using both oil and chalk pastels. Now, we have lots of oil pastels and they see quite a bit of use. We didn't have chalk pastels. What a great excuse to buy a new art supply. TM and I picked these up yesterday.

As you can see, I took picture after they were used all morning. They didn't come out of the box looking like this. You can also see that they were a popular art medium. Even now, after we finished with our project and had lunch, I have four people still sitting at the kitchen table creating new pictures.

Our project was to draw the northern lights. We used black paper, oil pastels for the ground, and chalk pastels for the lights. We also threw in a little ethnomusicology into the mix and listened to modern and traditional Inuit music while we drew. There was even some rap in the mix.

Here are the results.

L. (She wasn't sure she could do it at first, and then created this.)

G.

K. (K. was completely overwhelmed at first and I didn't think I could get him to try. So, I suggested his favorite thing to draw, just to get him started.... fire trucks. He happily agreed to draw a fire truck, and went on to add the lights on his own.)

K., also. (He then went on to immediately draw this one. Do you see the dog sled to the left of the lights?)

H.

D. 

TM

I also have dozens of other chalk pastel on black paper drawings that have been created in the past few hours. The chalk pastels were quite a worthwhile investment.