2012: Project 2: Matisse Drawing with Scissors

Our project today went slightly better than the last one. However, there is an interesting dynamic now that the girls are getting a bit older. My older daughter didn't want my younger daughter looking at her project. So I had to put a board up between the two of them. *sigh* It's always something. But both of them finished the project today and I'm very pleased with how they turned out. I think they enjoyed it so it was a success in my book.

Our artist today was once again Henri Matisse. We created "Egyptian Curtain" projects last year and this year I came across two things that inspired us. First, I received a FABULOUS set of books at Christmas this year: the Smart About Art series. These are amazing books for grade school kids. Each book is set up as if a student is writing a report on the artist. The "child author" takes you briefly through the major events in the artist's life, the themes in the artist's work, the colors used, and more. Very elementary, yet informative. I HIGHLY recommend these books. Today, I pulled the Matisse book down from the shelf and read the last half of the book to the girls. This portion of the book discussed Matisse's health struggles later in life. It described how he resorted to using scissors and making wonderful paper collages when he could no longer stand to paint for hours. He would cut the paper and instruct his assistants where to attach them to the artwork. Besides this lovely little book, we were also inspired today by this post at Mrs. Knight's Smartest Artists.

I showed the girls several images of Matisse's cut paper work:

Sorrow of the King, 1952

Polinesia, The Sky, 1947

Panel with Mask, 1947

They each had their own set of construction paper (an entire pad of construction purchased at the Dollar Store!!), a clear glue roller, pair of scissors and their art journal.

I told them they could make anything. They could try making an ocean themed collage like those in the post on Mrs. Knight's blog or they could go on their own and make anything they wanted. But I told them I didn't want it to be a "real" picture of something. This was my way of letting them know I didn't want something literal. They asked if they could draw it out first with pencil on the construction paper. I told them that I thought it would be neat if they just used the scissors, but if they felt they needed to draw it out first that would be okay. They both decided to just use the scissors. ;-)

I really like these next two pictures because they really show how into the process they got:

Ella had to stand she was so into what she was doing. And below, you can see paper all around Lily. Sort of reminds me of the photo of Matisse that I showed the girls where he has paper all over the floor by him. :-)

And here are their finished masterpieces:

Above: Entitled "Jazz" by Ella. She told me all about her rainbow color theme. The aliens are dancing. The very top purple circle with the little rainbow colored dots is a disco ball. The rest of the top half she said was just white space and she wanted to fill it so she just placed the paper how she wanted.

Lily decided to call hers "Candyland". Do you see the candy corn on the lower right side? The other smaller orange triangles are baby candy corns. The hearts are candy hearts (like conversation hearts). There's a candy cane. The purple shapes are chocolate eggs and the red circle is a cherry lifesaver. Oh, and the pink squares are strawberry Starburst. Isn't that awesome?!

You know what I loved about the girls creations? They both truly knew exactly what they were doing as they went along. They both picked a theme completely on their own, not influenced by me; not influenced by Matisse's artwork themes (other than Ella calling hers Jazz....Matisse did create a book of art called Jazz). These were truly their own art ideas. I LOVE LOVE LOVE that!

Great Art Book Series & A Collage Project

Irene Luxbacher has created an absolutely wonderful series of books for kids and parents called the Starting Art Series. I came across these books this week while at the library with my toddler. They are PERFECT for introducing art concepts to children, especially if you do not have any kind of art background at all. Very elementary, yet fun! I picked up four of the six books in the series while I was at the library and I LOVE every one of them!

I took some photos of the inside so you can get a feel for what they are like:

 

The first page of each book, shows the projects you can find in it. And gives a one or two sentence blurb defining that particular medium of art.

Each project page shows step by step how to create the project and a larger view of the finished product.

The last page of the book has tips for parents and teachers for further projects and how to make art time fun. There is also a list of the art words used for that medium as a sort of index.

I REALLY liked the painting book. If you need any help at all teaching color theory! This is a great companion. There is a project for warm/cool colors, one for complementary colors, for tones (light and dark within one color), different brush techniques. FABULOUS!

 The same day I brought these books home, my older daughter had some friends over and my younger daughter asked if she could do an art project to give her something to do while they played. I told her, "Of course!" So I showed her the fish project in the collage book because I knew I could easily come up with the supplies for it.

 The instructions told her to make a banana shape for the fish's body. HA! She asked me if she could trace around a banana. :-)

You could make this project as easy as you like or add in more skills if you want it to take longer or have your child practice cutting. For the easy method, use circle scrapbook punches to create your circle shapes. For the more challenging method, have your child use a circle stencil to draw various sized circles or they can draw them freehand. Then have them cut all the circles out. We used a combination of these. I had a larger circle punch and we used a stencil for the smaller circles and Lily cut them out.

 After she figured out where she wanted all her circles to go, she used a glue stick to glue them down.

 Then added torn scrapbook paper for the water and an orange circle for the sun.

Last, she added a few sparkles to make her fish extra fabulous! A fun and super easy project (especially for non-crafty type parents!).

 Here are the other titles in the series:

Eric Carle-Inspired Art

The Education Network has been celebrating Eric Carle's birthday all week. Check it out here and register if you're interested. They are a very friendly group!

We decided to join in the Eric Carle fun this morning. My husband is out of town and I figured we would need to have something to keep up busy anyway. This project took a lonnnng time today. It could easily be broken into 2-3 days for kids with shorter attention span. I ended up helping the girls A LOT by the end because they were impatient and tired. But overall, I think they liked this project. This is actually one that I conjured up myself!

Before we did anything else, the girls looked through our Eric Carle books: BROWN BEAR, BROWN BEAR, WHAT DO YOU SEE; POLAR BEAR, POLAR BEAR, WHAT DO YOU HEAR?; and PANDA BEAR, PANDA BEAR, WHAT DO YOU SEE? We used to have THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR book, but we couldn't find it. They picked out which animal they wanted to make. Ella picked the frog and Lily picked the sea turtle:

First, we painted solid colors on pieces of paper. I cut pieces of cardboard to use as combs so we could "texturize" the paints. Many of Eric Carle's images have a great texture to them. This step is also good for practicing color theory (mixing colors). The girls LOVED this part! This could be all you do for Day 1 if you want to spread the project out.

We stopped to have lunch and let the paper dry. Then we broke the animal bodies down into their different parts and drew those separately on a piece of white paper. This way we could make as many mistakes as we wanted, erasing them and getting it right. And we wouldn't have to use up our painted paper for this. We then cut the shapes out of the white paper.


We used these white pieces as a pattern to trace and cut out our shapes on the painted paper. I ended up doing much of this step as the girls were pretty much ready to be done at this point. This could be the end of Day 2 if you're spreading the project out.

And finally, we glued the different pieces on the painted background paper. And then dabbed white paint for the eyes. I took the photos so I could post this. Once the white paint dries, they'll go back and add in the pupils. :-)

Voila! The girls' Eric Carle creations!