Summer Bucket List: Make Eric Carle-style Collage Art

We all enjoyed looking at Eric Carle books. If your kids are small, they might be currently looking at them, but I find even older kids enjoy making Eric Carle-style collage art.

Remember the marbled paper we made?

Well now you can put it to some use with this project.
 Just pick up any Eric Carle book and look at his unique collage style.

 Then begin cutting...

and let the gluing begin.

Here are the results of my kids!
The marbled paper became maps of enchanted lands, giraffes munching on lunch, lobsters, fire breathing dragons, birds tucked in the holes of trees, lions stretching in the Savannah sun...

Alex's lobster

almost as if by magic.

Originally published Jul 6, 2012

123...I Can Paint! Complementary Colors and a Busy and Bright City Street

Pairs of colors, like blue and orange, green and red or purple and yellow are called complementary colors. They look extra bright and busy beside each other.

Let is turn these busy colors into a bright and lively city street.

Mix up gray paint, using a little black and a little white paint together. Cover the background to make a gray sky. Let this dry.

Using a spoon, drop blobs of paint on the background, putting complementary colors next to each other.

Press a square of cardboard on one blob of paint at a time, dragging it down to the bottom of the canvas.

Keep doing this until you have a painting full of colorful city buildings. Don't the colors together make the buildings jump out at you? Let this dry.

Now you can paint in the details. 

Paint in windows, a street at the bottom. You could add cars, people, planes or clouds...whatever you want.

sources and resources:

• 123...I Can Paint, Irene Luxbacher

123...I Can Paint! Warm Colors and A Field of Flowers

Some colors seem warm and some seem cool. Red, yellow and orange are warm colors whereas green, blue and purple are cool colors. This week we are mixing and using warm colors to make a field of Black-eyed Susans (the Maryland state flower).

First mix the paints to make a warm light orange.

Use this for the background.

Once the background is dry, paint brown circles all over the background.

We dipped a wine cork in the paint and dabbed it on. You could also use a piece of cut sponge or just paint them freehand. They do not have to be perfect circles.

You can let this dry before adding on the petals, or you can just be careful not to smear the centers while you add on the petals. Either way, when you paint the petals, first mix up two shades of yellow -light yellow and a darker yellow. Using these different shades of yellow, paint the flower petals. We used fingers to paint on the petals.

For contrast, you can paint a strip of light, bright blue for the sky...

and some green stems and leaves. You can add any other details you would like to your painting.

Next week we will be working with cool colors.

sources and resources:

• 123...I Can Paint, Irene Luxbacher

123...I Can Paint! Tones and A Bird's-eye View

Every color can be lightened by mixing it with a little white paint or darkened by mixing it with a little black paint. The new colors are tones of the first color.

We filled three sections of his pallet with a little green paint. To one we added a bit of white paint and to another, we added black paint. We left the third section alone.

Just as we painted the blue paint to form the background for our ocean scene, we paint the background of this painting with the green paint. Let this dry before going on.

Paint a few squares on the background with the light green and a few squares with the dark green. Brown paint can become dirt roads. Let the painting dry before going on any further.

Once dry you can add the details of your bird's-eye view. You can use any colors you want for houses, cars and animals. Let this dry before adding the last touches.

sources and resources:

• 123...I Can Paint, Irene Luxbacher

1 2 3...I Can Paint!: Mix It Up! Primary and Secondary Colors

For Christmas Alex received an art set with acrylic paints and an art book. We will be doing weekly art projects that are simple enough for young or special needs students and yet interesting enough that perhaps some older students might want to do them, too. These would be great for a family art study. The first lesson is about primary and secondary colors and is simple enough to take just a few minutes and yet sets a great background for an ocean themed painting.

Blue, yellow and red are called primary colors. When you mix them, they make secondary colors green, orange and purple.

For this project, get out your primary colors and a surface to paint on. We are using acrylics and a small canvas, but you can use any paints such as tempera and any surface such as paper.

Paint your entire surface with blue paint.

Now, put some yellow paint near the top of your surface and mix it into some of the wet blue paint.

When the yellow mixes with the blue, it turns green.

Now, do the same at the bottom, using red paint this time.

As the red paint mixes with the blue, it becomes purple.

Now, let this background painting dry. We will turn this into an underwater world, with the light playing off the surface of the water, making it look green and the darkness at the bottom of the painting is a deep, dark purple.

Once your background is dry, we can begin to make our ocean scene.

We mixed some red and yellow paint together in various proportions  to make several shades of orange. You will also need some black, white and some blue to mix with some yellow to make shades of green. You will also need these supplies: brushes, cotton swabs, craft sticks, a pencil or any other supplies you would like to use to make the details.

Dip your thumb into the paint and press it onto your painting to make fish. You can make them fat, round fish with just your print straight on the surface, or you can drag your finger a little while moving it up to make a longer fish.

 Using a paintbrush or cotton swab, you can add the details of fins and tails.

 With a craft stick you can add stripes to your fish...

and a pencil can be used to add the eyes. Using the pencil, you can also add white dots for bubbles.

Mix some blue and yellow together to make shades of green and add some water plants. Add the darker shade of green on one side of the plant to give it depth. You can any other details you want.

sources and resources:

• 123...I Can Paint, Irene Luxbacher

Phylum Cnidaria, Part 1: Hydra and Jellyfish

We have been having fun learning about Cnidarians.

The Phylum Cnidaria (also called Coelenterate) can be further broken down into Subphylums and Classes.

The Subphylum Anthozoa includes corals and sea anemones and Subphylum Medusozoa includes jellyfish. The Jellyfish can be broken down into three major classes: Class Scyphozoa or true jellyfish, Class Cubozoa or box jellies and Class Hydrozoa or hydras.

Subphylum Medusozoa

Class Hydrozoa: Hydras

Cnidarian comes from the Greek word "knide," which means nettle, which is something which delivers a sting. They sting because they have nematocysts which are like little capsules of stinging liquid with a sharp needle-like point which pieces the skin, letting out a thin hollow thread to deliver the liquid under the skin.

The hydra has lots of tentacles that contain nematocysts. These subdue their prey so that the tentacles can get the prey to it's mouth.

Class Scyphozoa: True Jellyfish

Quentin's, age 8

 Jellyfish Pictures
We made jellyfish pictures by using lots of watered paint and then holding the page to let the paint drip to make the tentacles.

Alex's, age 17

 We lightly painted a notebook page with blue watercolor and then cut out our jellyfish and glued them to the page.

This made a very attractive notebook page.

You can use one of them to note the parts of the jellyfish.

Jellyfish in a Bottle
Ours did not turn out as well as the ones at Bhoom Play! partially because I could not find a thin clear plastic grocery bag. I used a large Ziploc bag and the plastic was to thick. We put ours in a 2-liter instead of a 1-liter bottle.

Alex's, age 17

Jellyfish Ocean Art

Using the painting we made when we were studying tints, we created some jellyfish deep blue sea art.
We went over the five ways to create depth...

1)overlapping

2)placement on the page

3)size

4)amount of detail

5)boldness or paleness of color

Then they drew jellyfish on their paper in white oil pastel using as many techniques for creating depth as they could.

Quentin's, age 8

Jellyfish Lunch

For fun we made a jellyfish lunch.

Cut off the ends of hot dogs and stick raw spaghetti noodles in the flat side.
Boil them for the time specified on the spaghetti package.
Serve with spaghetti sauce or ketchup.

Class Cubozoa or box jellies 

Box jellyfish are distinguished from other jellyfish by their cube-shaped medusae. Stings from several species in the class are extremely painful and sometimes fatal to humans but they are generally restricted to the tropical and subtropical oceans such as the Indo-Pacific.

sources:

• Jellyfish Paintings at Deep Space Sparkle
• Jellyfish Pictures at Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational and Usborne's 365 Things to Do with Paper and Cardboard
• Jellyfish in a Bottle at Bhoomplay's Blog
• Jellyfish Ocean Art at Framed in Swirly Gold
• Jellyfish Lunch at Over the Crescent Moon
• Lift-the-Flap Classification Chart of Invertebrates at Ellen McHenry's Basement Workshop

Other Ideas for Hands-On Learning about Jellyfish:

• Jellyfish Puppets at Fiskars Crafts
• Jellyfish Tunnel Book at Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational
• More Ideas at School Time Snippets

related posts:

• Cnidaria, part 2: Sea Anemones and Coral