Category: art projects

Egg Tempera Frescoes

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Last week we made egg tempera paint using a recipe I found in several places after trolling the Internet. The directions were, use egg yolk, anything that would make a pigment (we tried crushed dry pastels and food dye), a bit of water and vinegar. The idea was to make mini plaster ‘frescoes’, inspired by the beautiful Italian frescoes found in churches in the early Renaissance. We used meat trays for our plaster mixture and happily worked away with our glossy transparent homemade egg tempera paint. The following week, I pulled them out for the kids to finish-but we found they had gone a bit mouldy (one of my students looked mortified; his carefully painted Jesus looked like he had green chicken pox). We google searched our concerns ‘why does egg tempera go mouldy?’ with no joy. Apparently no one else in cyberspace has had this happen. The weather has been a bit on the wet side, and maybe our yolk ratios were too generous. Still, I love the learning that happens through mistakes. There is a lot of science in art. We are continuing our look into Renaissance art-I will keep posting!

Pre Primary Castles

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Pre-primary artists used corrugated papers and paint to make fairytale castles. This is a great activity to teach shape and texture. We achieved this in two 50 minute sessions, the first session we looked at the shapes found in old castles, and I demonstrated how to cut out shapes and assemble them onto the paper……so very important to demonstrate, I always have to remind myself that children are not mind readers!!! After doing some drawings of castle shapes, they cut out their shapes (some needed a little help- cutting castle turrets is hard work!), then glued them down onto black paper (we used pva glue). I was a bit torn between painting them the following week or using them to make prints….but I think the greater learning was achieved through just painting them. Young kids looooove colour mixing. I think the more of this they can do, the better. I love hearing shrieks of “oh wow I made gold/purple/green”….messy but worth it! I think these young artists should be very happy with what they have achieved.

Fairytale Sihouettes

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My senior homeschool group have been working (meticulously!) on creating fairytale inspired silhouettes. We had a look at some artwork by Czech artist Divica Landrova (1908- 1982), noting the repetitive shapes and stylised images.

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Students then researched some fairytale silhouettes using whatever device they had on hand (phones, iPad, laptops). They sketched their designs onto black paper, then cut out their image using a scalpel or Stanley knife. Some of their designs were very intricate! They then glued their composition on to white paper. These pictures show some of their work in progress!

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A bit of mixed media

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I’m teaching my 3/4 class how to include foreground, middle ground and backgrounds in landscapes. We used tissue paper and paint to make the foreground appear closer. We also made some trees out of torn newspaper. They painted on some recycled lino donated from the Pre Primary classroom. They look pretty cool so far, can’t wait til they add the finishing touches with oil pastel..although, these ones look pretty good as they are 😊

Aerial View

Published on by Alyssa Kanitsch2 Comments

 

Today my year 3/4 art students created collages of aerial views. We discussed how an aerial view is a view from above, like in a plane. A lot of aboriginal art is based on the aerial view. We westerners are really biased toward seeing the world and art from a frontal viewpoint!

The important thing about aerial perspective is that there is no horizon line, so this was a great follow up for the alien landscape activity, because the focus there was on putting in a horizon line that shows where the land and sky meet.

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We also talked about collage and how it’s a really flexible way of using lots of materials. We used newspaper, coloured tissue paper, coloured construction paper and dry pastels. After I did a quick demo, kids were very keen to explore their own ideas and they came up with some unique ways of using collage to show aerial views.

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