2012: Project 4: James Rizzi-Inspired Birds (Bird Art Camp)

My girls have taken part in many, MANY art camps in the last few years around where we live in Eden Prairie: at Kidcreate Studio and the city's Art Center. Everything from Journey through Art, Art Around the World, Pinkalicious and Friends, Dress Up Camp, Lego Loco Art camp, Fairy Camp, Angry Birds Art, and more. They are in a few camps this summer as well, but I decided after spending two summers doing art projects with the girls and seeing so many fun projects on Pinterest that I would attempt my own form of Mommy Art Camp. We usually do one art project a week here at home because we have so much going on. But I picked this week and blocked off enough time to do four days of art projects all relating to birds. AND, to top it off we are going to make a trip to the MN Zoo on Thursday to tie in our Science Friday (albeit on Thursday) activity with it. It won't be too exciting, but we're going to pay extra attention to all the different types of birds we see while we're there.

At first, I planned one project for each of the four days, but the girls were pretty excited about the whole thing, so I quickly threw together an extra project on Monday. I have since planned other projects so that we're doing a couple things each day.

I gave them their art journals and showed them several images of James Rizzi's (1950-2011) art work. He was a New York artist whose pop art style was fun and whimsical. The girls thought his buildings in Germany and his stained glass window in a shopping center were really cool. But they loved the rest of his art too. We had fun looking for birds throughout his work.

Happy Rizzi House, Germany

Rizzi Cupola in shopping center dome.

Once we had looked at the images, I used Deep Space Sparkle's Rizzi birds art lesson as a guide and showed the girls how to draw a bird in Rizzi's style. We were also inspired by this image from Cedar Creek Elementary on Artsonia. They used pencil and then I outlined their drawings in pastel for them. I typically would let them do the outlining, but I knew from past experience that it is difficult for them to outline with pastels without smearing it on the page. I wanted to keep them happy and in good moods without thinking they had "messed" up their artwork. They also didn't object to my outlining or I would have let them do it. After this step, they used liquid watercolors to paint the birds in bright fun colors.

I drew out each set on the chalkboard while the girls followed along.

Outlining finished!

Starting to paint

I actually preferred the contrast with the lime green, but Lily wanted to mix colors for the background. I didn't say anything and she went on her merry way. ;-)

And here are their finished Rizzi-inspired birds:

My six year old's. The background turned out pretty darn cool! I also love the expression on her sun. :-)

My eight year old's. So cute!

The girls liked this project. They have both drawn this style of bird on different paper when they were creating on their own in their rooms. :-)  And I learned about a new artist too! I hadn't heard of James Rizzi before and really think is art work is quite fun and would be an awesome theme for a child's bedroom.