Quarantine art project

I'm thinking I'm going to be writing a rather serious blog post tomorrow, so how about we stick with something lighter today?

We finished our two-day art project this morning, and it was much more successful than I had hoped. I'll show you the finished projects and then I'll tell you about them.

Top (l to r): G., H., Y.
Bottom (l to r): L., R., K.

These are our Stonehenge silhouettes. We moved from Egypt to Neolithic Britain and Stonehenge, since they were fairly concurrent. Having done our reading and documentary watching, it was time to do an art project. (This project I found, like most art activities we do, on Pinterest.) There were a couple of skills with this project. There were supposed to be done with black construction paper for the silhouettes (another concept we talked about), but I seemed to have used that up with a previous science project. I did have dark blue card stock, so we used that instead. I actually kind of like how the blue looks. (Normally, I would have done a quick run to the craft store to get the needed material, but the virus and all...)

The first was to learn about color value, where the intensity of the color change while the shade of the color doesn't change. This was more less successful. If you look at L.'s up close, you will see her solution to the frustration of not getting the tone light enough in the center. She took another paint brush and spattered it. H. had the same difficulty, but she solved the problem a different way (hooray! for independent problem solving). She took some white paint and painted her center circle white. Others chose to use a paper towel to wipe off too much paint. Having survived, for the most part, the day's project, we let them dry overnight. One funny story... I guess I haven't given R. a paint brush very often. I set her up with brush, paint, paper, and water and she happily started, dipping her brush into the paint. She started painting and as is usual, the brush ran out of paint, getting lighter and lighter. She shouts at me, "Mommy! Not working!" as she flung the paint brush about getting paint all over her sleeve. I realized that she was expecting the paint brush to work like a pen or pencil, where it continues to mark regardless of how long you use it. I got her cleaned up and helped sort out her misunderstanding. She was fine after that.

This morning I was a little hesitant to start, because I thought this would be the more difficult portion of the project. I was totally wrong. They loved it and no one had any difficulty. Take a look at R.'s. She did that all on her own, and you can sort of see a resemblance to Stonehenge in her pieces. What you need to understand when you look at this is that every time up until now, whenever R. has been given scissors, she starts out cutting what she is supposed to, and then without fail, she quickly devolves into cutting anything she can get a hold of into teeny tiny itty bitty little  pieces. I have been hesitant to give her scissors, so was happily surprised.

H. and Y. both tried to show the perspective as in the example. Y. is often reluctant to try art projects (dang perfectionism getting in the way), so it was great to see her try something a little more difficult. I thought she pulled it off quite well. H. also tried it, but it is not a copy of Y.'s but her own interpretation. What I particularly like is that there was some good visual-spatial thinking going one with one pair of uprights being seen through another.

I really just love them all and how the background colors all complement each other. I will probably frame these and find somewhere to hang them as a group. Successful art projects make me happy.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Making bias tape... otherwise known as the Sew, Mama, Sew! Giveaway

Apple picking in the rain

Kenzie on the beach