Venetian Architecture

Drop in Art at the OKCMOA yesterday was so much fun! I had really wonderful group of creative children and adults that came in to draw, color and paint their creations with me.

We drew inspiration from the view painters in the new exhibition, La Serenissima: Eighteenth-century Venetian Art from North American Collections.

I made a few notes on the board to get started.



This first step can be done with pencil or jump right into it with a Sharpie marker. If you use pencil you can erase but you will need to allow more time because the pencil lines will need to be gone over with Sharpie anyway.

Begin by drawing a line across your paper. You draw your buildings as you want above the line. Below the line you mirror the buildings using a wavy line to represent reflecting in the water. If you used pencil, you need to now go over your pencil lines with Sharpie marker before going to the next step.

Now use oil pastels to fill in your drawing. For the reflection buildings try to color lightly so the paper will accept more of the watercolor wash.

Now you are ready for the final step! Create water and sky by using blue watercolor to wash over your drawing. The oil pastel resists the watercolor.

These turned out great! Here are some of the works!

You will need:
-watercolor paper
-pencils
-rulers
-Sharpie or other permanent marker
-oil pastels
-blue watercolor
-water and brushes

Sunset in Venice

The OKCMOA has two exciting exhibits that opened this past week. One being, La Serenissima: Eighteenth-century Venetian Art from North American Collections and the other is Jonathan Hils: Intersection.

In this class for ages 15-36 months we took at look at La Serenissima. We focused on the maritime aspect of the exhibit finding ships and sailboats. I gathered the kids in a small circle and we used our arms as oars to sing Row, Row, Row Your Boat. They really liked that. In the classroom we read the book, Ship Shapes by Stella Blackstone. This is a really cute book!
To get started on our project each child had two pieces of white paper and two black ships. (Have older kids draw and cut their own boats!) I handed out paint palettes with warm and cool paint colors. I decided for the children to paint the sky and water separately because I didn't want them mixing up the colors.



First they painted the warm sky.



then cool colors for water



The kids used a glue stick to apply glue all over a piece of 14x11 black paper and parents helped place the water and sky paper together leaving a small 1/2 inch border to act as a mat.

Finally they glued their ships on and we set sail! Here are some of their works. So much fun!

You will need:
-14x11 black paper or posterboard
-2 pieces of watercolor paper 10x5
-warm pain colors
-cool paint colors
-pre cut boats for small children. For older kids have them draw and cut their own boats!
-paintbrushes

O'Keeffe Paintings

For Drop-in-Art this past weekend at the OKCMOA I had museum guests and members create flower paintings using Georgia O'Keeffe as our inspiration. To get everyone started I had a variety of flowers on a table for people to choose and take to their workstation. Using the flower to study detail they lightly sketched then painted their O'Keeffe inspired paintings. I encouraged people to work large, and to create a background for their flower as well.

For this you will need:
-watercolor paper
-paint (we used Crayola washable)
-brushes
-pencil

Here are some of our creations from all ages. They turned out beautiful! So happy to share these with you!

Fancy Fabric Collage

In a fun class for children ages 15-36 months I prepared a fun fabric collage project. This class went hand in hand with the OKCMOA's (now gone) exhibit, Sketch to Screen: The Art of Hollywood Costume Design. The exhibit featured many famous costumes that were worn in some of your favorite movies. Who doesn't love costumes?

First we talked about fabric. What is fabric? "Your shirt is blue fabric, your dress is pink fabric" "What color of fabric am I wearing?" Then we talked about costumes. "Do you ever play dress up? What is your favorite costume? We read a Halloween book, Spot's Halloween-which might seem odd in August, but it's about costumes and even has Spot and his friends in costumes that are in the exhibit...Superman, Cowboy, perfect. These are some of the things we leave the classroom and search through the exhibit for.



On a table in assembly line fashion I set our a variety of fabrics and ribbons in a rainbow of colors. (I also included scissors as an option for parents to use if they pleased.) I tried to incorporate a variety of textures as well. Each workstation had an 9x12 piece of interfacing (you could use cardboard, poster board or whatever!), tacky glue and glue stick.



The children went through the line and picked out the pieces they wanted to use and placed them down. It was easiest to have adult squeeze glue all over interfacing and have child place fabric pieces on top.



You will need:
-Interfacing or cardboard
-fabrics (precut to small shapes)
-ribbons
-glue
-scissors

So much fun! Here are some of our finished fabric collages!

Paper Costumes

We had a lot of fun today creating paper costumes at the OKCMOA. For Drop-in-art today I had the children design and build costumes using poster board, tissue paper and other items.

First we drew and thought out our designs on paper. We related our pieces to the museum's current exhibition, Sketch to Screen: The Art of Hollywood Costume Design. Oddly, there were a lot of girls today so, we made a lot of dresses and skirts.

The best way to start with the skirts is to cut a length of poster board into a strip. From there you can attach tissue paper easily with a gluestick.



Here you can see a length of poster board cut to waist size and pieces of tissue paper have been added with foam stickers.



We added all sort of other embellishments and even a bodice to the waistband.


Add a bodice but cutting poster board and taping it on both sides to your waistband. You can sort of see on the backside of my example how to attach bodice.

You will need:
-poster board
-tissue paper
-scissors
-tape
-glue sticks
-hot glue (for fast instant hold)
-feather and any other items you wish to attach

Here are a few of our works! The kids loved this and yours will too!






















closeup of rosettes on my class example. Enjoy!