Today’s Story Time read aloud was “The Rainbow Goblins” by Ul de Rico. This is a stunningly illustrated book that tells the story of the Valley of the Rainbows and the greedy goblins who want to steal all the beautiful colors.
Rainbows are magical and even the scientific explanation for their origin is the stuff of wonder. Light streaming through water molecules at just the right angle to bend light? Amazing. White light that actually carries the spectrum of colors? Incredible. Nature and science really are magic and so is art.
You can watch the read aloud video and see how I created the mini rainbows above at Sea of Visibility on FB.
Rothko was an abstract artist who expressed emotions with color. he also tried to make viewers feel certain emotions only using color.
When I was playing with lipstick, eye shadow and nail polish to blend and combine colors, I was reminded of Mark Rothko’s abstract color paintings. Just trying out different color combinations and blending the different pigments together made me happy. I thought I knew what result I would get but was pleasantly surprised every time.
Here are two great sites to visit to learn more about the artist Mark Rothko and to make your own rainbow experiments.
No paint at home? No problem! You can make dyes and paint at home using vegetable scraps and fruit. In one of my previous videos, Drawing with Glue, I showed you how to use condiments like turmeric, paprika and cinnamon as pigments, today we’ll be using food!
** Be sure to have help from a grownup because there is some boiling water involved**
In today’s video available at these links – on FB and Instagram you’ll see how you can use carrot, beet, lemon and blackberry dyes to make a bubble painting, straw painting and a funky texture painting.
I have included the link to download a wonderful picture tutorial from http://meyamo.com/ that I followed to make these dyes.
I didn’t have any powdered sugar, so I left that out. This gave me a paint that is very close to watercolor and I was able to use the same techniques I use with watercolor paint.
Supplies–
Orange carrots, purple carrot, frozen beets, blackberries and lemon
Watercolor paper – you will need sturdy paper. If you don’t have card stock or watercolor paper, I suggest gluing a few pages of copy paper together or gluing copy paper to a piece of cardboard. This will prevent the paint from soaking into the paper completely.
This is a great use for any older fruits and vegetable scraps you have. You can also use any jars or plastic containers you’ve been saving or have in the recycling pile to store your paint for future paintings.
Finished bubble painting
Finished straw painting.
Texture created with salt on beet paint
The concentration of color depends on how much water is added to the fruit and vegetables. Although the color may be very light at first, it does dry darker and once your first layer of paint is dry you can add more to make your color more vibrant.
Make the straw painting by dropping puddles of paint on the paper with a brush or spoon and blowing the paint around, producing some really abstract designs.
Adding salt to the wet paint will give you an interesting texture. See how the texture changes by adding more or less. Once dry, brush or tap off the salt and see what your texture looks like.
If you don’t have any paintbrushes, you can also use a cotton ball or a make up sponge! This sponge gave me 3 sides to get interesting prints from.
Make up sponge as paintbrush/stamp.
Sponge prints using carrot and beet paint
As you can see, there are many ways to experiment with your natural dyes. What other kind of natural paint has been used throughout history?
Here are some links to more resources about that –
Hello! today’s project is super simple but can be expanded and transformed into anything you like! Collage is an art technique that almost everyone has used at some point. It lends itself to so many possibilities and can be created with just about any materials you have on hand.
As always you can see the full video project at Art Out of Anything on Facebook and Instagram. Brand new project videos on Tuesday and Thursday every week.
For today’s project I chose the following supplies –
Paper – all kinds to tear up like magazines, construction paper, tissue paper, copy paper etc.
Glue stick
Pencil and/or marker
Scissor
Paper to draw my shape on and as the canvas for your collage
STEPS –
Choose shape you would like to fill. I chose a heart but also drew a silhouette of a cat. You can also use coloring book pages or print out coloring pages or line drawings and use those as your shape guide.
Tear the collage paper into small pieces to fit your shape. Optional – you can also cut your paper into pieces with scissors. Tearing is also a really good fine motor skill to practice.
Start gluing your pieces to the inside of your shape as if you were coloring. You can overlap pieces or place them next to each other. You can also leave space in between pieces. Try all different ways to fill in your shape.
Once completed, add one coat of glue to the entire surface of your collage to glue down any loose edges. Here is my completed heart shape collage which I glued onto a page from a magazine, cut around it, then glued onto another full magazine page to make a border. The red page was a perfume ad so the heart smells pretty too!
Of course you can also come up with your own theme for a collage! Here are some examples of collages my students made that describe their favorite place –
My House
The Beach
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York City
The Golden Gate Bridge
You can also make a collage using only shades of the same color, only faces and more. Challenge yourself to create a collage landscape using only pictures, like they did in the examples above of their favorite place. What picture do you think they used to represent the sand? Hint – it’s an advertisement for flooring.
Picasso and Braque were the first to use collage they way we recognize it, in their work. Here’s a link to a fantastic article, with photos of amazing collage work by famous artists My Modern Met – Collage Art
This is a digital shape collage maker that uses your own photos – Shape Collage download
It’s also an app for Android and IPhones.
Collage is an art form that I use in my personal work all the time. I even make collage jewelry with scraps of anything I have on hand –
I hope you find wild and wonderful things to make collages of!
Please contact patty @eljaiekart@gmail.com for remote learning workshops and professional development bookings.
Today’s Story Time Read Aloud is Miss Spider’s Wedding by David Kirk. You can see the video read aloud and video tutorial at Art Out of Anything on FB and Instagram.
I love insects. I love reading about them, drawing them and creating mashed up illustrations of insects and other animals! David Kirk’s stunning paintings that illustrate Miss Spider’s Wedding, remind us how beautiful insects are and also how beautiful a little feeling called love is too.
When I decided to make insects for this project, I didn’t have any clay or dough and I thought maybe other people might not have any either. SO, I have made some simple insects using paper, tape, straws, shish kabob sticks, paint and glue. You can also use chopsticks and Q-Tips or pencils.
Below you will find links to sites that show you how to make your own dough at home, learn more about insects and some free downloadable templates for inspiration.
Steps –
Wings – I am sure you have probably seen this classic symmetry activity. It’s the easiest and prettiest way to get pairs of wings for your insect.
fold a piece of paper in half
place paint, directly from bottle or tube, near the center crease of the paper.
add as many colors as you like but make sure you are using small amounts of paint. You don’t want the paint to leak out!
once you have all the paint colors you like, close the paper on the crease so it’s folded again
begin spreading out the paint in between the two halves of the paper.
You can see the paint faintly through the paper and can shape the wings by using your hands and spreading the paint. Open your paper and you have your wings!
Finished “butterfly wings” symmetry.
In my project, I used an 8.5″ x 11″ piece of copy paper and once dry, was able to cut out 3 pairs of wings.
Butterfly using a shish kabob stick
Bee using paper and tape
Dragonfly using a straw
I also made a “bee” using paper and tape. It’s easy to mold paper into shapes and hold together using tape. You can watch me complete that little bee on the video.
Science Connection – Insects are some of the most interesting species on the planet. Here are some links to learn about the difference between insects, bugs and more –
You can watch the step by step video for this project at Art Out of Anything on FB and Instagram. New projects posted every week on Tuesday and Thursday!
Today’s project is an old favorite, with a new twist. In keeping with our motto of “work with what you have”, drawing with glue just got a little interesting.
Supplies –
white glue
paper – construction paper, card stock, cardboard or all of these
sand
glitter
Sand and glitter will be used as your pigments (colors). No sand? No glitter? You’ve got great powdered pigments right in your kitchen cabinets!
I used the following:
salt
sugar
pepper
condiments like onion powder, paprika, nutmeg, cinnamon, dry mustard, ground or instant coffee etc.
I put my powdered pigments into little plastic shot glasses, but you can use yours straight from the original containers too.
A great addition to this project is to have some music playing and “draw” to the music. Music and art are very good companions. It’s interesting to see how different kinds of music can inspire you and your kiddo to create.
You can start drawing a free hand design by letting the glue flow and drip from the bottle.
If you want to get a steadier line, place the tip of the glue bottle at an angle on the paper and use it like a pencil to draw.
Tap the container to control how much powdered pigment is added to the drawing.
You can use only one color at a a time for each drawing or you can use a variety of colors to get lines that fade into eachother. That’s my favorite technique.
Multi color on white paper
Multi color on black paper.
Give the glue a little time to dry so it doesn’t drip when you pour off the extra colors. Remember, the thicker the line the longer it will take to dry.
Once your piece is complete, be sure to save the excess pigment. Now you’ll have what I like to call, the very special Pre K Rainbow color mix that you can use for more projects 🙂
I’ve gotten a little fancy with my paper here and will use my Pre K Rainbow color mix as my pigment.
Spiral complete!
As you can see, there are so many different ways you can experiment with pigments and one of the most interesting results, is that you end up with a pretty fragrant work of art. See if you can find condiments that work well together in terms of their scents. Nutmeg, cinnamon and sugar might just inspire you to make a glue drawing of cupcakes or a pumpkin pie!
Resources and Project Extension – When I do this project in an Art Out of Anything workshop, I always start by introducing a popular art from from India called Rangoli. Here’s a link to the history of this beautiful art form, the traditional process and free templates to download to try your own – https://www.dltk-kids.com/world/india/mrangoli.htm
Once all of your amazing artwork is completely dry, shake off any excess pigment and if needed, carefully brush off any left over pigment with a soft paintbrush or tissue.
One last thing, no white glue? No problem, glue sticks work just fine too.
Glue sticks dry much faster than liquid glue so you have to work a little faster, this would be a good time to play some peppy music!
artoutofanything.com 