Summer Pinterest Challenge 2019: Week 4

We have two weeks until school starts and I am not ready.  We are enjoying these nice slow days of summer (it's too hot to step outside!).  The boys are busy playing toys they normally don't have time for and doing these weekly art projects I planned way back when school was in session.  This one took us some time because I was just not in my groove.  Coming back from vacation and stepping back into reality (well, the reality of summer) was hard.  We took it slow and finally just finished it up yesterday.  Some projects are like that.  But the result of this one just makes my heart so happy.  My favorite art projects are usually those that include some paint and a paintbrush (or two), so when I planned these art projects I wanted to make sure we were not only studying artists, their styles, but also different mediums.  Watercolors tend to be my favorite because they are a super easy clean up.  This project used a little bit of watercolor to produce a certain effect, but other than that, it was paper and scissors and a lot of fun! 

This week, we are studying Matisse, who started out painting beautiful paintings that resemble those of Monet, that included landscapes and still lifes.  Later, he began to experiment with brighter, bolder colors.  His lines were sharper, more modern.  As he grew older, he found he couldn't paint anymore, so he started cutting out paper shapes and placing them on paper, using both the negative and positive space from his cut outs, as well as taking advantage of contrasting colors.  Matisse's works are so full of life and color, making him a really fun artist for kids to study! 

 We started out by painting a piece of paper with blue watercolor.  We wanted to give the blue a water-like look, so we layered a sheet of  plastic wrap over the top while it dried. 

  After it dried, we started cutting out shapes out of bright colors for our background and gluing them down on a piece of white card stock paper. 

 Then, using some dark navy blue card stock (we just used what we had in my stash), the kids cut out shapes for a stool.  Then, using the paper they water colored (now dry), they folded it in half and cut out a vase/fish bowl shape.  I won't lie, the urge to cut out snowflakes was strong at this point. . . just ask Weston!  They glued all those on their paper and then cut out some fish to put inside their vase.  After that, we just cut out shapes, using both the negative and positive spaces and filled our paper squares. 

 I really love how they turned out!  With this art project, we read the two books above (I'll link them and others below).  The bottom, Meet Matisse, is incredibly wordy.  So we skimmed through it together, gathering some facts about Matisse and looking at some of his art.  The second book, Matisse's Garden, is a fun book that combines a cute story with beautiful illustrations about Matisse cutting out shapes with prints of his actual art work woven in between. 


 Books about Matisse:
Meet Matisse
Matisse's Garden
Drawing with Scissors
Blue and Other Colors
The Iridescense of Birds

 Henri's Scissors
Matisse: The King of Color
When Pigasso Met Mootisse


 Kids Art Challenge:
Week 1:Kandinsky
Week 2:Seurat
Week 3: Picasso

This post was inspired by this post. 

Don't forget to post a picture and use the hashtag:

#ootrbsummerkidsartchallenge 

Happy Creating! 

Summer Pinterest Challenge 2019: Week 3

 We took a little break in our Kids Art Challenge to go on an adventure, but we are back, recovered, and ready to rejoin the real life again.  Before we left, we fit in our third art challenge and it was the perfect way to break up our 6 weeks of art projects.  I am so glad that, even though we were busy packing and doing 4th of July stuff, we still fit it in, because it really got my kids excited for the National Art Gallery in Washington D.C.

Picasso is a really fun artist to talk about because he had so many styles and periods. Modern Art is really fun to teach kids because its so flexible to what the child sees.  We read the books Picasso and Mootisse and this Picasso book.  (We'll talk about Matisse in week 4).  The first book is just a fictional book based on the friendship of the two artists and the second is a great resource for kids with lots of pictures of Picasso's art.  It talks about his life and the periods of his art in a way that draws the kids in and gets them enjoying art.

After reading about Picasso and studying his art work, Weston was so excited to go search for his work when we visited the National Art Gallery in Washington D.C.  He was able to tell me a specific painting was painted during Picasso's Blue Period and then he was pointing out Cubism left and right.  There was a proud mom moment where I saw him really enjoy art!  I think it's also proof that spending a little bit of time each week studying artists and their art work is so important!

One thing I loved about the book, Pigasso and Mootisse, was that it showed the friendship that developed between both Picasso and Matisse and then walking through the art gallery where that friendship was on display was just epic!  The kids were so excited to see Picasso's work (as well as Kandinksky, Seraut, Monet, and Van Gogh. . . all artists we are going to be covering in this challenge.

But, let's get back to the project of the week.  This week, we are talking about Picasso's style Cubism.  This project was so fun and fairly easy that we really enjoyed relaxing while painting (even though we should have been packing up our stuff!). 

  We started out by drawing a simple picture on top of water color paper.  We just used pencil. 

 Then we drew horizontal and vertical lines across the page.  We used the width of a ruler because it was easier for the kids to keep track of where the next line went.  My goal is to have the boys do their art entirely on their own.  This is their masterpiece. . . not mine (even though I enjoy doing it along side them!). 

 Then we used different colors and drew in our spaces.  The goal was to make them contrast so the actual picture cubes stand out and you can tell what the original picture was.  Ethan realized after the fact that a blue whale was hard to get to stand out using the same colors for the water.  Weston started out great, but after his sabors were done, he was done.  I still am loving the way it came out.  And who, knows, maybe it will get finished by the end of summer?  Maybe that's just me dreaming.  ha ha.  Also, just because someone will probably ask. . . no the artichoke hearts and pineapple were not used in the making of this art project!  ha ha!

 Each week, I am pretty sure I say that it's my favorite project yet, but this one really was!  And then seeing them the following week get excited about art in a museum.  Oh, this mamma heart is so happy! 

 Here are a few other books about Picasso:
Picasso and the Girl with the Pony Tail, by Laurence Anholt
100 Pablo Picassos, by Violet Lemay
Who was Pablo Picasso, by True Kelly
The Three Musicians, by Veronique Massenot

 You can find the rest of the Summer Pinterest Challenge for 2019 at these links:
Week 1: Kandinsky

Week 2: Seurat

If you are joining us, feel free to use the following hashtag:

#ootrbsummerkidsartchallenge

 I hope you are all finding time to get creative this summer in some way or another!  Thanks for stopping by!

Summer Pinterest Challenge 2019: Week 2

We are in our 4th week of summer mode and it's wonderful.  I am staying up way too late and sleeping in while my kids fend for themselves and watch some random dude playing video games and that new Pac-Man cartoon on Netflix in between all of the many of soccer games on this season.  We are all living our best lives over here. . . lazy summer vibes are strong!

We are, however, making room for fun things like art, movies, and adventure along with the occasional chore, but that isn't fun.  No one really wants to hear about chores.  You are here because you are looking for something to do with your kids that gets them doing something creative.  So, welcome to Week 2 of our Summer Pinterest Challenge, Kids Art edition.  If you haven't had a chance to read about last week's art project, you can scroll down to the bottom for the link.  It gives an over view of our approach for the this project and why we are combining it with literacy and a little artist study and not just random art projects.  I encourage you to head over to that post to read more and then come back, or just read it afterwards. 

 I remember taking an art history class in college.  It was probably one of my most favorite classes because it taught me so much more than the styles, but the history and life of the painters themselves.  Two years ago, on our summer trip to Chicago, we took the kids to one of our favorite art museums. . . the Chicago Art Institute.  This place is amazing and has so many wonderful (and famous) paintings on display.  One of them being this painting by Georges Seurat (if you've watched Ferris Bueller. . . there's a famous scene at the art institute with this painting).  Looking at paintings in a book is so much different than seeing them up close and in person.  For example, this painting, called "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" is huge.  And when you take notice of the style he used, called Pointillism, it's amazingly impressive that each tiny piece of color is a dot of paint.  So, picking Seurat for our Art Challenge was no question.  

 We had friends over last week, when we worked on our Pointillism piece and so we forced them into joining in the fun (they look so bored, don't they? ha ha).  We chose to do the Eiffel Tower because Seurat is French, but also, he has a piece where he did the Eiffel Tower with Pointillism and it's beautiful, but also a lot easier to re-create than one with people, monkeys, and landscape.

    We used an empty egg carton and some q-tips for this art challenge.  I modeled it with some paper on the fridge. And they followed along.  We talked a lot about how making dots is an up-down process and not a slide the paint across the paper to achieve a straight line.  My favorite is how easy it is for them to fix areas that they messed up and how beautiful they all turned out. 

 I was going to have them cover the entire thing with dots, but they were loosing interest after about 45 minutes and so they decided to do some fireworks and honestly, I love it! 

 I can't even begin to tell you just how much I love how these turned out!  The conversations that happened while they were sitting down creating are one of my favorite things.  They all worked so hard and did such a great job. . .  

 that popsicles were a must!  (and we eat them outside because it was gorgeous!).

I hope you will join us on this art challenge this summer!  Feel free to post to instagram and use #OOTRBsummerkidsartchallenge

Also, check out last week's first challenge here. 

This post was inspired by the pin from this blog post. 

Happy Creating!