Winter Wonderland Party

Last week I led a birthday party of 3 to 6 year olds in a winter wonderland themed party. The request was for something that was Frozen like but not a Frozen theme. The challenge was to include something that would refer to the movie without being specific.

With that criteria in mind I came up with a Winter wonderland diorama that made use of tissue paper, painted paper, painting and snowflake cutting. I then led the party in making snowmen to place in their wonderland. If this theme comes around again I'll incorporate the puff paint to the project as well. Hind sight is so 20/20.

Winding Down and Getting Wound Back Up

December always creeps up on me and this year more so. Between birthday parties, Parents Nights Out, volunteering for my eldest's school's PAC, School performances and collaborating on the window display at Artspace with one of my fellow instructors time has gotten away from me.

My after school painting and drawing class has come to an end. We finished off the term with an artist trading card making session and a small talk about art abandonment. I took some time to go through all the artwork that had not been taken home and package it up in folders with a small note to each students thanking them for their time with me. One of the parents of a younger class member took the time yesterday to let me know how excited her child was with all the art she brought home and the impact of my thank you note. I'm feeling pretty good about the term and already have some new ideas for Winter term. The penultimate lesson was a full on painting exploration of planets in space. 

We are gearing down with the rest of the terms classes. by next Saturday the term will be done. My main focus at the moment is to get a parent participation lesson ready for the end of term and the plans I made at the beginning of the term don't excite me as much as I'd like, so I'm exploring, looking and thinking so I can build an exciting lesson.

Shaving Foam Puff Paint

In the past I've used homemade puff paint to make snowmen, and the earth. My fellow art teachers at Artspace have made polar bears, ice cream cones and cupcakes.

To make the paint you mix equal parts foam and glue. Some would say this is easy and on paper it is. However I've never quite gotten the measurements exact what with the expanding nature of the foam. I eyeball it and mix it as best as I can. At Artspace we've used liquid tempera and also gel food colouring to the mix to create marble colours and full on tints.

I just love how each of the snow men created have their own personality. 

which leads me to the discovery I made last year when I had my little explorers make earth in space one of my artists scraped away some of his puff paint from the circle we were painting into earth. The paper was beautifully marbled. with this in mind I created another shaving foam paint lesson for the next lesson that focused on making those marbled masterpieces. I'll be making use of the left over paint this morning for that very thing. I'll post with those soon.

Frosted Finished Art

As promised in this post here is the finished art using the Epsom salt solution wash. I love the different snowflake patterns these artists came up with.

Snowflakes & Small Nut Eating Rodents with Bushy Tails

Detail from Arts Enrichment Art

Experimenting with materials is part of what makes art exciting. Sometimes the experiment isn't a success, sometimes it yields results that aren't expected and sometimes a little of all of the above happens. On the weekend had my art exploration classes attempt a painting technique using an Epsom salt solution as a wash. I've used the wash before but with watercolour paints and gotten some wonderful crystallisation effects once the paint was dry.

Art Exploration winter mixed media 

Just to see what would happen I tried the solution with heavily diluted tempera paint. While the tempera didn't allow for the crystal formation a translucent paint would have given us there was some beautifully heavy granulation of the pigment in the paintings that we ended up with.

I thought to revisit the technique again using the liquid ink that was made using liquid food colouring with my Arts enrichment artists and this time it was successful. When I left Artspace this afternoon the edges of some of the paintings had the beginnings of Jack Frost's signature fern pattern making an appearance where the solution had been heavily deposited on the paper.

Both the Arts Enrichment and the Art Sparks classes made use of squirrels in their work this week. I drew squirrel outlines onto paper for the Art Sparks artists. They used chalk pastel to draw a background and snowflakes. We then collage strips of brown paper to make a nest for our squirrel. We finished off by adding glitter to our snowflakes.

The Arts Enrichment used oil pastel for snowflakes, collaged a snowy landscape and painted on a wash of liquid ink mixed with Epsom solution.

ArtSparks Mixed Media with chalk pastel

You can see the finished art on this post here

Jam Packed with Jellyfish

Sometimes When I'm scheduled to do a birthday party the guest of honour has very specific requests for the theme of the lesson I must plan; How to Train your Dragon, Lego Friends, Ponies... Other times I get specific but very open requests for a theme. themes that direct me a certain place but allow me a lot of freedom to decide the focus.

My latest birthday falls in to the latter. When asked about the theme she would like the birthday girl just said she wanted something under the sea but not sea stars. A few years ago I devoted a week long summer camp to under the sea themes art lessons so inspiration was not difficult to find. Sometimes to get an idea all I need to do is look in the supply room at Artspace.  Mixed Media Creation parties at Artspace rely heavily on recycled and re-purposed materials for the lessons. The supply room is a treasure chest of saved materials from empty yogurt cups and magazine pages to piles and piles of caps and bottle lids.

I decided to use egg cartons and clear plastic water bottle lids to make a jellyfish garden under the sea. the results were... well I'll just let you look for yourself.

Frosty

Usually around the end of November I start thinking about wintery art lesson themes. No exceptions this year on that. Last winter I found a recipe for making frost paint. It's a hit or miss project that has good results even without the frost succeeding.

I'm cooking up a lesson alternative this morning and when I come back later this afternoon I'll share the results.

after:

Jury is still out on the frost,most of the paintings that were nearly dry at the end of the day had a lovely granulated effect but now frost patterning. The really wet ones have possibilities.