Fabulous Frescoes

To paint fresco means to paint on fresh, moist plaster with pigments dissolved in water. I changed it up a bit for many reasons. The biggest reason I found is that little kids will push a paintbrush right through wet plaster. So, we painted on mostly dry plaster with tempera paints. They turned out great!

There are many brands of plaster. I got a big bucket at Michael's. Check the ratio. Mine was about 2 cups plaster to one cup water. Mix, mix, mix! I poured the plaster into these red plastic solo plates that I found at walmart. They were pretty deep and in a nice shape. Give them a few taps to remove air bubbles.

You can see this painted fresco in the plate here.



This plate also made it easy for the fresco to pop out of when completely dry. It begins to harden right away setting up pretty good in 15 minutes and hard in 30 minutes depending on several factors. I would say leave them in molds for at least 4 hours to be completely hard.

We were trying to focus on Venice using the new exhibition as inspiration, but sometimes we just want to paint what we want! :) Here are some of our wonderful creations made at Drop in Art by children of all ages.

You will need:
-plaster of paris, water, measuring cup, disposable mixing bowls and disposable mixing utensils.
-solo plates
-paintbrushes
-tempera paints

This one is popped out of mold:

Toddlers build Venice

So, I had a pretty neat idea that I shared with the Museum and it is now a realization thanks to someone that could share the vision and find the funding. Tiny Tuesdays at the OKCMOA was born. It's open ended art making for little ones ages 2-5 once a month from 10-12pm.

I know how hard it can be to get to a class on time and I hope this will give Moms some flexibility with their schedule. I hope some of you will share this new adventure and visit me at the Museum.

Today we had Venice on our mind using, La Serenissima: Eighteenth-Century Venetian Art from North American Collections as an inspiration.

I had some books to look at:


I set up our shapes in assembly line fashion for the little ones to choose from.







We used shapes to build our city, grounding the piece with a bridge. Above the bridge are buildings and below are our boats ready to set sail.

Here are some of our pieces. I hope you enjoy!

You will need:
-14x11 black poster board
-pre-cut shapes (squares, rectangles, semi-circles, triangles and more)
-glue stick
-scissors

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