Super Blood Moon Eclipse Art

To continue with my student's postcard art projects, we decided to celebrate the Super Blood Moon Eclipse that occurred on September 27. I got the idea from the Full Moon Trees art project from Art Projects for Kids, but we executed it a bit differently.

We started off with a postcard sized piece of cardstock. This size lends itself to well, sending as postcards, but also to fitting inside a schoolwork portfolio. I usually have my student also write a paragraph about the subject in the piece and that makes a very fine portfolio of learning by the end of the year. I also find that small pieces are easier for my special needs student to accomplish without frustration or fatigue. All-in-all it works out well for us.

Anyway, back to the project at hand... first I traced a spice lid to use as our moon. If you think your student can do this himself, then by all means, have him do it, but I knew that my special needs student would struggle with this part, so I did it for him.  

Next, I had him use dark blue and purple chalk pastels to cover all of the card except the moon. I had him use his fingers to blend these colors a bit (a technique I learned from the Pastels Tutorials at Hodgepodge).

We then went on to add the black trees limbs using black tempera paint. He did most of the limbs, but since he had trouble add a fine touch with his brush, he let me add a few thin branches on the ends of his limbs. It really helped to make them look real. My goal is for my student to have fun, learn a bit and accomplish his project, so if he needs help here and there, I have no problem with it. If you feel you want your child to do all of his own work and he is unable to do the fine work, then by all means, leave the finer limbs off. 

It was here that we remembered that we wanted to do a little orange-ish blood moon effect, so rather than leaving it out entirely, he went back and added some orange and red in the moon using chalk pastels. Because we had already painted the trees, it has a little bit of gaps where the tree limbs cross, but I actually in the end liked the effect a lot. If you would like it more even, then your student might want to add the orange in when he is working with the chalk pastels for the background. 

This is the second one of the same project. I have him complete two of them so I can send one as a postcard to his aunt, and save the second one for his portfolio.