It takes a Village

For my son's school auction I lead the 1st grade art project I titled "It takes a Village." Thinking of how true that statement is for the auction alone. All the parents, teachers, businesses that donated items and more to put this fund-raising shindig together. My small part was a few man hours to complete two class projects that happily sold for quite a bit of money! (Both projects went for over $2,000 dollars!) This is money the school will use for new computers and classroom upgrades. So wonderful.

I wish I had taken better pictures of these pieces. They really did turn out so beautiful.





You can do this on your own!
You will need:
-colored card stock
-oil pastels
-scissors
-acid free glue dots
-framing optional

This is a collaboration piece. I pre-cut different shaped buildings from card stock. Children were instructed to use oil pastels to decorate their building as a home, store, apartment, etc. They were told to think about details like doors, windows, landscaping, shingles, etc.

I collected all the buildings and created a childlike background. The background was done on two pieces of pastel paper and colored on top of with oil pastel. I cut and colored trees and shrubs. All of the pieces were put down with acid free glue dots. The finished piece was 30x24 matted and framed. I think this would be cute on a small scale as well!

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

Russian Architecture

This project was done as a collaboration with the Museum and the Philharmonic. It is a children's concert series and this particular event was Tchaikovsky and the 1812 Overture. Well, I could not think of Tchaikovsky and his love for Russia without thinking of the beautiful architecture that surrounded him-especially the onion domes.



I had checked out this WONDERFUL book from our library ahead of time as well as several others to use as examples for the kids. (I kept and read much of this book for myself just because it is so amazing and I do have a love for architecture)

We used:
9x12 black construction paper
Crayola construction paper crayons

easy!

Have you tried those construction paper crayons? They are so vibrant and fun-especially on black paper. They almost look like oil pastels-without the mess. I am very lucky that the Museum's Senior Associate Curator of Education keeps a wonderfully stocked closet filled with all sorts of goodies to plan with and use.

The project needed to be easy-to facilitate a broad age range and be ready for as many as 200 kids.

Showing the books, I told the children to focus on the shapes, as the entire building can be broken down into rectangles, triangles, semi-circles, and to top it off, the beautiful onion domes. The kids really had a good time with this, even the little ones.

More examples: