Elephants, elephants, elephants

One of my all time favorite art lessons this year has been these Indian elephants.

In Jaipur, India there is a tradition of painting elephants as part of celebrations.  The elephant is considered a divine animal and in the Hindu belief there is an elephant head deity named Ganesha.  Elephants are worshiped and showered with color, paint, fabric, jewels, anklets, scarves and even toe nail polish during celebrations...yikes.

Using guided drawing, the basic shapes of the elephants were sketch by students on to 9x12 construction paper with pencil.   Lines were then traced with sharpies and color added with pastels. Borders added then mounted on 9x12 construction paper.

The project was done at two separate schools by kindergartens, first, second and third graders. Yup you can believe it!

 At the other school students created an background environment on separate paper using water color or any medium of their choice.  Elephants were cut out and glued onto the environments.  At the other school students drew their borders. 

Some students preferred to draw directly onto the grey construction paper  and color with oil pastels. (shown below)

Tags:  elephants, India, children art, art, paintings of elephants, pastels, watercolor

You can see a wonderful and similar project at the following link:  http://paintedpaperintheartroom.blogspot.com/2010/10/festival-elephants-of-india.html

Aboriginal Zany

We studied the indigenous art of Australia.  After looking at and discussing samples of indigenous art from Australia, how to draw books and materials were passed out.  The how to draw books gave students the opportunity to choose the subjects for their illustrations and help those who needed assistance drawing images.  Basic ideas were quickly practiced on scratch paper; then re-sketched on black construction paper with white pastel.  The other instructions given were to draw large; draw in background sections and avoid small details.  Students proceeded to color with oil pastels and add more designs elements to complete the assignment.  This assignment was done with 4th graders and their work is wonderful.


 Tags:  aboriginal, aboriginal art, art, children's art, dinosaurs, insects, dogs, penguins, dolphins, fish, snake, pastel.

Red Spring Watercolor Flowers

Spring is in the air and summer just around the corner.  With just a few months before summer vacation, students energy is changing.  They are energetic; would rather be outside playing and ready for summer.  They can feel it coming.  Recently we worked on some soothing watercolor flowers.  I kept this project small and focused on learning Chinese brush strokes. The paper was cut to 4.5 inches by 6 inches; painters tape applied to back and after a brief demonstration on how to make flowers using brush strokes, student began. I also supplied a large color reference from a calender of Chinese paintings.  Students painted the flowers using a watercolor pallets the first week. The background was painted with a liquid watercolor the following  week.  We mounted them on a blue construction paper.  These were completed by 3 grade students.  They turned out quite nice, don't you agree?

Tags: red, green, blue, turquoise, flowers, spring, paint, florals, children, summer, school, vacation, art, paintings, garden