Tag: math

Art is Messy – action painting with yarn

Happy Earth Day!

Today’s art project video can be viewed at Art Out of Anything on FB and @artoutofanything on Instagram.

 With this project we continue to offer art activities that you can do at home or in the classroom with much of what you already have on hand so you can work with what you have!
Action painting is exactly what it sounds like, painting with movement. 
Jackson Pollock was a painter know for his action paintings. You can see him painting and hear him talking about his artistic process in this video – SFMOMA – Paintings have a life of their own.
You can also visit his house on the east end of Long Island in NY or virtually at  Pollock-Krasner House. His wife, Lee Krasner was also an amazing artist.
Pollock’s paintings are not only colorful and lively, they also contain fractals, which is another example of how math can be found everywhere in art.
Today we will make our own action painting using yarn and paint.
Project Steps –  the steps for this project work best being viewed but I will give you the abridged version here.
  • gather your materials – I used acrylic paint, pieces of yarn and embroidery thread, clothespins, cups, paper and paint.
  • cover you work space with an old sheet or tablecloth or even a garbage bag.
  • pour paint into cups, add a splash of water if paint is too thick
  • clothespins are used to pick up yarn pieces and dip them into the paint cups. Make sure to coat the yarn as much as possible with the paint.
  • once your yarn is ready, lift it out of the cup with the clothespin and drop it onto the paper that is your canvas. You can also drag the yarn on the paper or shake it so it create splatters.
  • I would suggest leaving the yarn on the paper until you have completed your piece so that the paint has time to soak into the paper. This also creates a more cohesive finished piece.
  • once you feel your piece is done, remove the yarn using the clothespins or your fingers. You can even use chopsticks or tweezers!

You can lay your finished masterpiece flat to dry or hang it. If you have runny paint on your piece, your painting will change as the paint drips while it is hanging. Just be sure to place some newspaper or another garbage bag under the hanging painting to catch the drips.

I mentioned the word fractals earlier. A fractal is a never ending pattern. They can be found in math equations and in the world all around us from tree branches to snowflakes. Scientists who have analyzed Pollock’s seemingly random placement of paint, have discovered these never ending patterns in his work. Can you think of how that would happen when he was dripping and dropping paint and lots of other objects into his paintings without any obvious intentional placement? I have my own theory but you have to watch the project video for that!

Here are some links to really interesting articles about their theories and what they found –

Discover Magazine

A Scholarly Blog

Here are some interactive sites where you can see how fractals work and create your own –

Experimenting with Fractals, Math Fairy, Kids  , Interactive Fractal Machine

Here are some links to online drawing tools to create your own, not so messy action painting –

Scratch MIT , Nick jr. Drawing

I hope you enjoy getting messy and exploring the wonderful world of fractals and art.

Follow us on FB and Instagram @artoutofanything for weekly videos and activities. You can also contact us at eljaiekart@gmail.com or direct message us at FB and Instagram if you are interested in remote professional development workshops or homeschooling workshops.

Thanks for visiting and keep creating!

Patty

 

 

 

Drawing with Shapes!

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Hi everyone!

Today’s story time read aloud is about a little frog that would rather be any other animal than who he is. It takes a crafty wolf to remind him why we should be happy to be who we are.
I love this book because the illustrator gave the characters so much personality. It’s also a very important message for everyone.

You can see the video read aloud @Art Out of Anything on FB.

Looking at the illustrations in this book reminds me of how easy it is to learn how to draw animals, or just about anything, by breaking the object down into simple shapes.

In the slideshow above you can see how I used circles, squares, rectangles and triangles to draw some of the animals found in the story.

If you look at the world around you, you will notice that geometry is everywhere!

Here’s a link to a more detailed explanation and drawing practice  – Art Tutor Blog

Try this free downloadable template that uses triangles and circles, to get started on your own animal drawing – Shapes drawing template

Connect the groups of dots and see what animal you get. Can you guess what animal it is?I did leave out one shape, see if you can tell which shape fits to complete the drawing.

There’s a new art project video every Tuesday and Thursday @artoutofanything on FB and Instagram and a new Story Time every Saturday.

Thanks so much for visiting today and keep creating!

Patty

Yes! You can play ball in the house!

NEWSPAPER BALLS

Hi again!

Today we learned about shapes using paper and tape. When I make art I love to use re purposed materials. Anything that is lying around the house is a potential new art supply.

Having a look in my recycling bin, I grabbed a few sheets of newspaper and made some pretty awesome newspaper balls! But they’re not just newspaper, they are soccer balls, basketballs, baseball, bowling balls even juggling balls. You can make them as big or small as you like.

Apart from learning new vocabulary words like sphere and 3 dimensional, you can also explore some math concepts by comparing size and weight. Try adding different kinds of “paper” like aluminum foil, tissue paper, plastic wrap, even old holiday wrapping paper works well and will give you a chance to explore textures and experiment with how well they work to help the balls bounce off surfaces, but not off each other!

Can you make a football? A Frisbee? Ok those last 2 are not spheres but you can see how easy it would be to take this project to the next level 🙂

Remember – work with what you have.

Visit @artoutofanything on FB to see the video, learn more and don’t forget to show me what you made!

Thanks so much for visiting and I’ll be back next week,

Patty