maandag 28 februari 2011

Paper mache figure on a bottle

You need:

  1. wine bottle
  2. newspapers torn in strips
  3. paper tape
  4. wallpaper paste
  5. tempera paint
  6. brushes
  7. varnish
  8. fabrics
  9. wool, cotton, feathers etc.

Students make a ball of newspaper and tape it on the bottle with paper tape. Tear newspapers in strips and paste them with wallpaper paste on the ball far over the bottle so that the tape is not visible anymore. Be sure to use a lot of wallpaper paste. If the ball on the bottle is smooth, students make eyes, nose, ears and paste them on the head. Fix them with paper strips and paste. Let dry for at least 24 hours.

After drying the figures can be painted. Start with the brightest colour. Paint several times to be sure the ink of the newspaper is not visible anymore. Varnish the dolls to make them shine.

After drying the doll has to be dressed and beautified. Use fabrics, wool, cotton, feathers, beads, lace etc. Paste them on the bottle and head with strong glue.

All artworks are made by students of grade 3

Thanks to Ruth Megens

zondag 27 februari 2011

Making masks

You need:
  1. white cardboard
  2. rectangular aluminum containers
  3. paint
  4. brushes
  5. scissors
  6. glue
  7. cutting knife
  8. oil pastels

We look at masks from Venice, masks from Africa and the culture of the Incas, Mayans and Aztecs through photos on the internet. We discuss the form of the masks and look for the differences between the African, Venetian and those of the Incas. We look at the position of the eyes, nose and mouth.

Let students choose the style and material they want to use. The aluminium containers are meant for students who want to make an Inca mask, since Incas often used silver or gold. Draw with pencil the shape of the mask and cut it out. Mark the spot where the eyes should be (at half or slightly above or below the half) and cut them out. Draw a nose and cut it partly in order to create some relief. Colour the mask with oil pastels. For an Inca mask: cut the aluminum container, cut the eyes, cut a nose and paste it on, cut a mouth. Paint the mask with tempera, making sure there will be some shiny material to be seen.

Look at each others masks at the end of this lesson and discuss what style or influence you recognize.

Artworks made by students of grade 3

Thanks to Ann de Naegel (Belgium) and her students

zaterdag 26 februari 2011

Longing for spring: printing flowers!

You need:

  1. piece of linoleum of 12 by 12 cm
  2. several sorts of paper
  3. lino knives
  4. block printing ink
  5. flat piece of glass
  6. linoleum roller
  7. lino press
  8. coloured cardboard 34 by 12 cm
  9. scissors
  10. glue or stapler

Students draw one or more flowers on their piece of linoleum and cut it out. Then the flower has to be printed on three different sorts of paper. In this lesson I choose for coloured construction paper, a brown paper bag and white white woven towels from the dispenser. Cut the prints with 1 cm around. Paste or staple them on coloured cardboard. Spring can come!

Both artworks are made by students of grade 4

woensdag 16 februari 2011

Winter trees glimpse

Made by a student of grade 6

You need:
  1. cardboard in three colours, 15 by 20 cm
  2. ruler
  3. pencil
  4. cutter
  5. cutting mat
  6. double sided foamtape
  7. hook

Draw a rectangle on each sheet of cardboard 2 cm from the edges. Draw wintertrees in these rectangles. The trunk must be on the bottom, the branches must reach the left, right or upper edge. Make sure the three trunks slightly stagger. Cut the parts between the branches/trunk and the frame using a cutter. Use double sided foam tape to paste the three windows together. The lightest colour in the front, the darkest colour on the back.

Attach a hook to the window to hang it.

dinsdag 15 februari 2011

Wild flowers

You need:

  1. black construction paper 20 by 8 cm
  2. colour pencils
  3. tempera paint
  4. q-tips
  5. saucer
A short lesson with great results! Draw a lot of flower stems on the black paper with several colours green. Stamp the petals above and between the stems, using tempera and q-tips.

zondag 13 februari 2011

Patterned landscape

You need:

  1. white drawing sheet A5 size
  2. black fine marker or Indian ink
  3. coloured paper for background

Children sketch a simple mountain landscape with grey pencil. Use different patterns to colour the mountains: spheres, lines, triangles, squares, leaves - as different as possible. Patterns can by filled negatively of positively: fill a moutain with circles and colour the space between them with black, so the white circles will remain. Paste the drawing on a coloured background.

Made by students of grade 3

dinsdag 8 februari 2011

Connected hearts

You need:
  1. white drawing sheet A5 size
  2. piece of cardboard
  3. scissors
  4. oil pastels
  5. colour pencils
  6. watercolour paint
  7. jar with water
  8. brush
  9. coloured paper
  10. glue
  11. metallic gel pen or marker
Draw a heart on a piece of cardboard and cut it out. Trace the heart several times on the drawing sheet. Hearts should overlap. Trace the heart also on the edged of the sheet. Draw smaller hearts within the traced ones; be sure there is about half cm space between the two lines. Draw and erase the the pencil lines of the overlapping hearts as if they weave together: below - above - below - above. Colour the hearts between the double lines with oil pastels. Paint the sheet with diluted watercolour paint and leave the work to dry. Trace the oil pastel harts on both sides with coloured pencils. Paste the artwork on a coloured sheet and finish the hearts on the frame, using a silver metallic gel pen or marker.

zaterdag 5 februari 2011

Patterned hearts like Jim Dine

You need:
  1. drawing sheet A5 size
  2. crayons
  3. liquid water colour
  4. brush

Fold the sheet of paper into quarters. Cut a heart out of a piece in the hearts: Trace this heart four times with a pencil. Draw patterns in the hearts with crayons: stripes, circles, zigzag lines etc. Draw different patterns around the hearts.

Paint the whole sheet with liquid watercolour. The crayon will resist the ink.

vrijdag 4 februari 2011

Concentric circles Like Kandinsky

You need:
  1. drawing sheet A3 size with 12 squares of 10 by 10 cm
  2. temperea paint
  3. brushes
  4. paper towels
  5. jar with water

Wassily Kandinsky (1866 – 1944) was a Russian-French painter. His style of painting originally belonged to expressionism, and is sometimes included in symbolism. Kandinsky was one of the artists who gave shape to the abstract art in the early twentieth century.

Kandinsky was inspired by music. According to his own timbre theory, each colour has its own language and expression, and each colour has a soul. Kandinsky tried to convert musical compositions into paintings. He heard colours in music and he saw music in colours. This correlation between music and colour is the starting point of this lesson. Show students images of by Kandinsky. Tell that he listened to music while painting. Look at the painting 'Squares with concentric circles'. Which circle would belong to cheerful music? And what kind of music did Kandinsky hear while painting the dark circle?

Students are going to make a painting in the style of Kandinsky while listening to classical music. During this lesson they listened to Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Each student gets a white sheet with 12 squares of 10 by 1o cm. Tell them to work from the outside to the middle. We may see no white anymore. Try to avoid two the same colours in one circle. Hang all paintings together on a bulletin board for a great group project!

Made by students of grade 1

zaterdag 29 januari 2011

Clowning around

You need:
  1. coloured construction paper 32 by 23 cm
  2. white drawing paper A5 size
  3. oil pastels
  4. scissors
  5. glue
  6. tempera paint

Look at pictures of clowns on the digiboard and talk about how they recognize a clown.

Give each student a coloured construction paper and a white sheet of A5 size. Let them cut the corners of the white sheet, and let them paste this clown's face on the coloured sheet. Draw a clown using oil pastels: eyes, nose, mouth, hair, hat, bow etc. Colour the different parts with oil pastels. Outline everything with black.

Use toilet rolls and tempera paint to stamp coloured circles around the clown. Hang them all together on the bulletin board: ready for carnival!

Artworks made by students of grade 2

zaterdag 22 januari 2011

The man with the apple - like René Magritte (2)

Made by Tyra, grade 6
You need:
  1. white drawing sheet A4 size
  2. aquarelle pencils
  3. jar with water
  4. brush
  5. fine black marker
Rene Magritte is born in 1898 in Belgium. When Magritte is 13 years old, his mother commits suicide. She jumps in the river Samber and is found with her dress covering her face. This image has been suggested as the source of several paintings from Magritte: people hiding their faces with several objects.
In 1924 Magritte became friends with members of a surrealism group in Brussels: André Breton, Joan Miró and Salvador Dalí. These artists influence Magritte's work. In the end Magritte became famous with surrealistic paintings.
Magritte gave his paintings a realistic effect of surrealism. He painted simple objects, like a shoe, an apple, a pipe or a tree. Magritte took these things out of their ordinary environment and placed them in a special surrounding.
One of Magritte's most famous works is "La Trahison des Images" (The Treachery of Images). This is a very realistic painting from a pipe, with the text: Ceci n'est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe). The painting is not a pipe, but rather an image of a pipe. As Magritte himself commented: "The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it's just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture 'This is a pipe,' I'd have been lying!" By putting us constantly on the wrong track, Magritte forces us to think about art. Magritte thought it the task of an artist to place reality in a different context.
Links: Magritte museum, Brussel See also the other lesson In the style of René Magritte (1) on this blog.
Made by Debbie, grade 6
Students draw a part of a man or woman, from about chest height. Like Magritte, we see no face. And, like Magritte, the person has something on his head. In stead of the face, students draw an object of their choice. The drawing, person and background, has to be coloured with aquarelle pencils. Use water and a brush to create the effect of aquarel paint. Wait until the artwork is dry and outline everything with a fine marker.

woensdag 19 januari 2011

Foreshortening fun

You need:
  1. white drawing sheet A4 size
  2. colour pencils
  3. coloured paper for background

Sneakers have beautiful soles; sometimes the soles better than the shoes themselves! This art lesson is about foreshortening, soles and the inside of hands. Foreshortening occurs when an object appears compressed when seen from a particular viewpoint, and the effect of perspective causes distortion. Foreshortening is a particularly effective artistic device, used to give the impression of three-dimensional volume and create drama in a picture.

Tell students a story about a scary monster. "Imagine a terrible scary monster approaching you. The monster is much bigger than you and is running fast. You are scared and your try to run backwards. This does not work and you fall. The monster leans over you and you try to ward off with your hands .... "

Students draw the bottoms of the shoes on about the half of the drawing sheet. Then they draw their hands, overlapping the tops of the shoes. They drew their head in between the hands, and add their body. The arms need to be drawn directly to the hands, and the legs have to be drawn to the bottoms of the shoes. Students draw details on the shoe bottoms, and lines on their hands.

Use colour pencils to colour the drawing. When finished, paste it on a coloured background.

All artworks are made by students of grade 5

zondag 16 januari 2011

Searching for the chameleon

You need:

  1. white drawing sheet A4 size
  2. oil pastels
  3. scissors
  4. small pieces of foam
  5. double sided tape
Start the lesson with this poem about a chameleon.
Has anyone seen my chameleon this morning?
He has to be hiding somewhere.
He asked me if we could play hide-and-go-seek,
and then disappeared into thin air.
I've looked high and low in the yard and the house
and it seems like he's nowhere around.
He's probably hiding right out in the open
but doesn't yet want to be found.
I'm guessing he looks like a leaf on a bush
or the back of a sofa or chair.
He could be disguised as a book or a bagel.
Regardless, I don't think it's fair.
If you come across my chameleon, please tell him
I give up. He beat me today.
He's clearly the champion at hiding so, next time,
it's my turn to pick what we play.
Kenn Nesbitt
Draw shapes of your choice on the sheet. Leave about 1 cm white between the shapes. Colour them with three or four different colours of oil pastels.

Draw a chameleon on another sheet and colour it the same way as the first sheet: coloured shapes with one cm white between them. Cut it out with a one cm white around it. Use small pieces of foam and double side tape to paste the chameleon on the background. The chameleon will be slightly higher.

All artworks are made by students of grade 6

dinsdag 11 januari 2011

Colourful cows, like Peter Diem

You need:

  1. white painting sheet A3 size or a canvas
  2. acrylic paint
  3. brushes
  4. jar with water
  5. paper towels

Peter Diem (1945) is a Dutch painter. Diem, born from a Dutch father and a German mother, came in Amsterdam at the age of 3. He had a difficult childhood in which the people of Amsterdam showed they were not charmed by Germans so soon after the Second World War. After highschool Diem went to a school for graphic design to study graphic work. Through several European countries Diem landed in the 70's in the USA, where he married and had children. Halfway through the 90's he returned to the Netherlands and settled with his Diem Museum on the Prinsengracht Amsterdam.

Diem is inspired by the CoBrA Group ( a group of artists from Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam - see also my lesson about CoBrA artist Corneille). His style is abstract and expressive. He brings the paint thick on the canvas, sometimes directly from the tube. With brush, knife and fingers the bright coloured paint is spread across the canvas. 'Diem paints like a tornado, he lives his art'. Themes in his work are flying cows, Napoleon, Africa and Ernest Hemingway.

Show artwork of Diem on the digital board. Pictures are to be found on Diem's website or use the Google picture viewer and look for Peter Diem. Discuss Diem's work:

  • subject, Diem paints often cows
  • use of bright colours
  • simplicity of the image
  • thick black contour lines
  • no white spots anymore
  • the cow is full screen
Show students how to draw a simplified cow, by drawing a cow on the digital board (click on the picture to enlarge). Let the children draw a picture of a simple cow. They have to sketch thin, without drawing many details. The cow has to be painted with acrylic paint, considering the features of Diem's work. Paint a background. Outline the cow with black paint and a small brush. This will also eliminate the unevenness. And of course the work has to be signed, just like Diem does!

All artworks are made by students grade 5

zaterdag 8 januari 2011

Stamped snowmen

You need:

  1. coloured construction paper A3 size
  2. white and black tempera
  3. saucer
  4. brush
  5. wine bottle corks

Give all students a sheet of coloured construction paper. Give a saucer with white paint and a little black paint for every two students. Children have to use a cork to stamp a snowman. Knots, eyes and mouth have to be made by finger printing. Only a hat or broom may be painted with a brush.

By students of grade 1

donderdag 6 januari 2011

Artist Trading Cards

Some weeks before Christmas, I was contacted by Amy Baldwin, art teacher at St. Pauls Lutheran School in Millington (Michigan). She wrote me she was a fan of my weblog. We emailed for a while, wondering if we could do a little project together. I read about exchanging ATC's on many art blogs, so I proposed to let our students make those little cards for eachother. This seemed to her very nice, so we got started!

Amy's students made ATC's for my students, my Dutch students did the same for hers. A couple of days before Christmas I sent an envelope filled with 50 ATC's of my 23 students to Millington.

Yesterday we received the big envelope, full of ATC's! How exciting for my students to get those beautiful cards from the other side of the world! They admired the cards and were surprised about the Dutch words on some of them. Thank you very much Amy and thank you all, St. Paul's students!

dinsdag 4 januari 2011

Stuffed animal

You need:

  1. white or coloured drawing sheet A4 size
  2. chalk pastel
  3. pencil
  4. hairspray
  5. stuffed animal

Ask students to take their favourite stuffed animal for this lesson. Let them choose their own drawing sheet. In my class students had to choose from grey, brown or white.

Tell students how to work with chalk pastel: you have to colour lightly and then smudge the chalk with your fingers. Don't produce to much powder, because you won't be able to smudge it away anymore. Vary with colours; you may use two colours and smudge them together. Tell students about light and show them lighter and darker parts of the stuffed animals. Use white chalk to lighten up parts of the stuffed animal, and black chalk to darken colours and make shadows.

Draw a horizon line and sketch your stuffed animal lightly with a pencil. Colour it with chalk pastel. Chalk pastel will emphasize the softness of the animal. Create a background and colour it completely. Use hairspray to fixate the chalk and paste the work on a coloured background.

All artworks are made by students of grade 6.

zaterdag 25 december 2010

Owls in the night

You need:

  1. blue construction paper 15 by 20 cm
  2. white tempera paint
  3. piece of cardboard
  4. brush
  5. saucer
  6. paper towel
  7. fine black marker
  8. yellow pencil

Draw a moon and colour it with yellow pencil. Paint the bottom of the blue sheet white with tempera paint.

Put a paper towel on a saucer. Put a stripe of white tempera paint on the towel. The paper towel will function as a stamp pad. Dip the edge of a piece of cardboard into the white paint and print a trunk. Drag the cardboard a bit to create a thicker trunk. Print several branches. Be sure to leave some space between the branches for the owls.

Use a fingertop and white paint to print the body of the owls. Leave the work to dry.

Draw eyes with a yellow pencil. Outline the eyes with a fine black marker. Draw details like feathers, beak and legs.

Print snow flakes using a q-tip or the end of a brush.

zaterdag 18 december 2010

Penguins and polar bears

Made by Jorine, grade 6

You need:

  1. white drawing sheet A4 size
  2. plastic wrap
  3. watercolour paint
  4. brush
  5. jar with water
  6. black waterproof marker
  7. white tempera paint
  8. orange marker
  9. glue
  10. coloured cardboard
  11. white pencil

Paint a part of the sheet with blue water paint. Use lots of water. While the paint is still wet, push plastic wrap on it to create floes and then leave the sheet to dry. Remove the wrap.

Use a waterproof black marker to draw several penguins. Colour the black parts and draw wings. Use white tempera to paint the bellies. Leave the work to dry and draw eyes and beaks.

Draw a polar bear on the ice. Trace the pencil lines with a fine black waterproof marker. Paint the bear with white tempera paint, including the black lines to make them a bit hazy. Paint the background with a mixture of white tempera and a little blue. In the example the mix is made of white tempera and the blue rinse water of the water paint.

Paste the work on a coloured background and draw ice crystals along the edges with a white pencil.