Knee Bowls!

This week I showed my students how to shape a bowls using their knees.  They thought this was hysterical, but were pleased to see how well it works.  In Poway, the weather was nice so we worked in the park: 

Lu and Maddy

Bella

Ella

Maddie

May

 

 

 

 

Citlalli

Cilalli

Fall classes at All-Star Academy

We started off this session with a drawing inspired by a hand sewn camel from India.  It is so simple to draw which made it easy for them to concentrate on creating patterns which was our objective. Some of these kids are just in Kindergarten.  They did an awesome job!!

Antony and Melody

Brittney

Erica

Ewan

Aaron

Angela, Iris and Mihika

Howie

Antony

Melody

Erica

Brittney

Group Painting with kids at All-Star Academy

What an awesome day!  The All-Star Academy had an open house/carnival and invited me to lead a kids art activity to help promote my upcoming camps.  

I decided to start a collaborative project in mixed media.  I needed to keep it simple for kids of all ages, as well as their parents, so I chose a circle theme,  inspired by Kandinsky's circle paintings. 

I set up a table and invited everyone as they came in to create mini circle 'paintings' in oil pastels on 5" squares of sheer paper.  I asked them to either make concentric circles or  over lapping circles  and to completely cover the paper in strong color.  These will be layered in rows onto our painting after an underpainting is created.  Mixed media is all about layers...layers peeking through layers!

I wanted to give them an opportunity to experiment with several techniques so I set up stations for a few kids at a time to help start the underpainting.  One table had magazine images which could be collaged onto the gessoed plywood panel we were using.  Another table had several containers of acrylic paints thinned with clear painting medium (to keep them translucent). 
The kids REALLY enjoyed the kinetic experience of sweeping paint across the canvas and watching it drip.  Jacob even grabbed a second brush and painted with two hands!

As a bonus for the littlest kids, I set up a couple of easels for tempera painting since the supplies were already there.  I was reminded of how much I enjoyed painting at arts festivals as a kid!

Check out this short video of the young artists participating: Group Painting Project.

To be continued................

Clay Class

My group of Christian homeschoolers made clay crosses since Easter is coming up.  I'll show their finished projects in a couple of weeks after they've been painted and fired.  Here is what they did with their leftover pieces:

Thomas made an owl from his scraps

Thomas's owl

Madison and Tabitha playing around with their leftover clay

Fall classes underway

I just started teaching three Poway CFS homeschool classes. This week's lesson dealt with color - using graduated color blends in color pencil to enliven an artwork. We drew birds as a jumping off point. They really got into it!

Daniel

Joel

Monica

Morgan

Joel

Jonathan

Emma

Stuart

Matthew

Ben

Ethan

Travis