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See the Light Art | Homeschool Art Curriculum

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How to Paint a Solar Eclipse in Watercolor

paint a solar eclipse graphic

This is part one of a three-part, mixed media project (watercolor, permanent marker, fluorescent acrylic, and fluorescent colored pencils). The subject is a total solar eclipse.

To complete this part of the project you will need:

1. Watercolor paper
2. Watercolors (blue, red, and yellow)
3. Pencil
4. Liquid mask or painter’s tape
5. Small jar lid (the one I use is from a gallon jug).

For more videos, visit See the Light’s web page:
http://homeschoolartclass.com or
http://seethelightshine.com/art

Draw through the Bible with black light chalk artist, Jim Pence. This video series is designed for homeschoolers who want to have fun learning art and the Bible. And, in keeping with Jim’s black light chalk artistry, each of these projects incorporate black light chalk or paint.

For more children’s art resources, visit: seethelightshine.com

Draw the fall of Jericho

Draw the Fall of Jericho

Draw through the Bible with black light chalk artist, Jim Pence. This video series is designed for homeschoolers who want to have fun learning art and the Bible. And, in keeping with Jim’s black light chalk artistry, each of these projects incorporate black light chalk or paint.

For more children’s art resources, visit: seethelightshine.com

Draw the Serpent in the Wilderness

Draw the Serpent in the Wilderness

Draw through the Bible with black light chalk artist, Jim Pence. This video series is designed for homeschoolers who want to have fun learning art and the Bible. And, in keeping with Jim’s black light chalk artistry, each of these projects incorporate black light chalk or paint.

For more children’s art resources, visit: seethelightshine.com

Draw Moses at the Burning Bush

Art & Bible - Draw Moses at the Burning Bush. See the Light Art

Draw through the Bible with black light chalk artist, Jim Pence. This video series is designed for homeschoolers who want to have fun learning art and the Bible. And, in keeping with Jim’s black light chalk artistry, each of these projects incorporate black light chalk or paint.

For more children’s art resources, visit: seethelightshine.com

Art & Bible - Draw Moses at the Burning Bush. See the Light Art

Charlotte’s Web Collage Project

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

Collage is a great medium for any young artist to explore. All you need is a theme or idea, and lots of stuff to glue onto a background paper!

The home educator can gather all kinds of scraps to be available: wallpaper samples, wrapping paper , construction paper, ribbon, lace, old photographs and lots of used magazines.

The hardest part of a collage project is to get started. One option would be to tie the project to literature, perhaps a book that all of your students are reading.  Take just one line or one scene that can serve as the inspiration for students to simply express what images comes to mind.

Here is a step–by–step collage lesson for students ages 7 and up based on the E.B. White book Charlotte’s Web. (younger students can try if they have developed scissor skills).

Preparation

  • Gather supplies for the collage onto a large table. Suggestions: home and garden type magazines, nature magazines, empty seed packets, string or yarn, scraps of fabric, especially gingham or calico, lace, pad of  9” by 12” construction paper in assorted colors, scissors and glue sticks or white glue.
  • A copy of Charlotte’s Web should be handy for reference if needed.
  • Select a color of construction paper as your background paper. This will be what you build your collage on.
  • Start paging through old magazines that are ready for the recycling bin – students should be looking for images or colors that remind them of anything from the book. It could be a little girl, a barn, a field, a fence, any animals found in the story, or even something not figurative, but evokes the spirit of the book.

Making the Collage

  • As the items are carefully cut out, start arranging them onto the background paper, being sure to overlap – this is key to a successful collage. Do not give each item its own space on the paper.
  • Once you have some key images, now it is time to look through the magazines once more for words or phrases. One possibility is look for the words that Charlotte spun into her web. If you cannot find the actual words, just look for the letters that make up the words “Some Pig,”  “Terrific,” or “Humble.”
  • Use the string or yarn to cut into pieces that be made to fashion a web onto the surface of the background paper. Think of spokes of a wheel emanating from a center hub. Then spiral a longer piece of string in an ever-widening circle over the spokes that reach to the edges of your paper.
  • Lay your magazine words or letters over the web.
  • As a final stage you could add additional elements that give the feel of a country story – seed packets, canning labels, pieces of gingham, maybe even a few pieces of hay!
  • Rearrange the items for your collage several times, changing what is on top, the angles, how tight or spread apart the items are. Do not settle for the first way you laid things down on your paper!
  • If you still need something else for your collage, or your cut out elements are too small, then you can beef up the collage with color – either use another piece of construction paper of a contrasting color or look for glossy pages of color from the magazines, and cut into small squares . Arrange these splashes of color layered throughout the other collage elements to be a unifier.
  • Once you have composed your collage to your liking, now it is time to glue things down in the proper layers. This is perhaps the hardest part. A lot of patience is required to keep everything in place in the composition as you carefully glue a piece at a time.  Make sure you glue the bottom layer first, then the items that are layered in the middle, then the things that will be foremost (on top) of your collage.

Making collages can be a lot of fun, and does not need to be restricted to flat paper.  You can glue paper  and other flat items onto the top of a shoe box to create a memory keepsake box.   Explore possibilities of the types of items you can use from the recycle bin, like newspapers, comic strips, foil, greeting cards, labels from food products. After all, Pablo Picasso used the seat of a broken down chair in one of his most famous collages! Sometimes to make art, you don’t need to get out the messy paints or expensive supplies. You just need some scissors, glue and whatever you find in the recycling bin.

For more collage fun, check out Art Projects: Poppy Collage below.

Collage: Turn Scraps into Art

Collage by Picasso - 1913
Collage by Picasso - 1913

[Guest post by master artist, Pat Knepley]

Spanish artist Pablo Picasso may be the most well-known name in the world of art. And most people think of him as a painter. However, Picasso was also a sculptor and even brought back an ancient art form to be part of the modern art scene: collage. The term collage derives from the French “coller” meaning “glue”.

In Picasso’s case, he and friend and fellow-cubist painter Georges Braque, coined the term collage to mean the act of pasting scraps of flat objects (paper, lace, wicker, labels,) onto the surface of a painted canvas to make it part of the visual statement.

Picasso started this modern trend by adhering some chair seat caning to one of his canvases. His friend Braque pasted scraps of shredded paper. Later, newspaper clippings and labels from bottles , in fact any flat object would be incorporated into a painting, so that the words were part of the overall composition. There are other artists who through the twentieth century and into today have embraced collage as a viable art medium.

When the Post-impressionist Henri Matisse was plagued with health problems later in life, he gave up painting in oils at a tall easel, as was his custom, to try a new medium of art – collage. Matisse began to cut out large paper shapes and have assistants glue them to a large canvas to “paint with scissors”. His foray into bright colors, organic shapes, and oversized compositions brought a whole new audience to appreciate the genius that is Matisse.

The African American artist Romare Bearden used collage to great effect to tell stories of black Americans, with a special emphasis on musicians. What makes Bearden’s collages so intriguing are the many layers of painted papers, magazine clippings, and photographs to create complex images. When Bearden made collage his signature technique in the 1960s, he started off with simply torn or cut paper. But as the years went on, he added foil, textured materials, and miscellaneous found objects.

Next Time: An easy and fun Charlotte’s Web collage project for you and your children to try.

Interested in doing more collages? Scroll to the bottom of this post and check out Art Projects: Poppy Collage.

Notes:

For more about Romare Bearden, see: 

nga.gov/education/classroom/bearden/methc1.shtm

To learn more about Picasso and his collage work, check out this video:

Collage: Turn Scraps into Art. See the Light Art