Our Collages are Out of This World!!

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My DragonWing Art students have been experimenting with various paint techniques, with the results being made into planets for colorful "out of this world" collages. 

We began by painting large (18x24") pieces of paper with black ink, leaving unpainted borders about the thickness of a ruler. We also used some glittery purple paint on the ink, to add some sparkle.  When dry, white paint was spattered on with a toothbrush, to make more stars in space.

On small sheets of white paper, we used liquid watercolors in several ways to achieve interesting surface texture.

We used the watercolors with salt, 

With saran wrap,

And with bubble wrap.

 plus liquid watercolor and shaving cream for marbling.

We also used bleeding tissue paper applied with water, removing the tissue paper when dry, to create colorful blends.

 And finally, we printed some papers with slices of pool noodles and tempera paint.

 Often, our hands ended up getting printed, too!

 All the papers that were created were used to make into planets and more for our collages. 

We used various bottles, caps, bowls, cd's, rolls of tape, and more as circle tracers for planets.

We used black crayons to add shadows to our planets to make them look round.  This was easy for some of the students, and more challenging for others.

 I showed the students how to cut rings for planets if they desired. 

 And the students began merrily cutting planets for their collages, to glue onto their painted and spattered background papers.

I gave the students strips of holographic contact paper, that they used to create fancy borders for their papers.

I also had strips of glow-in-the-dark contact paper, which was used on the sides of the collage pictured below.

 Finally, I also offered the students some glitter glue.  The bottles hadn't been used in a while, and the glue often squirted out in wonky and unexpected ways, but still, the sparkle really jazzes up the skies!

There are currently 5 students in my DragonWing Arts class; I unfortunately neglected to photograph one of the final collages.  I'll photograph it in a few days, and then add the pic to this post.  In the meantime, here's one last pic.  

Creating crazy colorful papers for collage

Here's the beginnings of new project with some fun preparatory steps!  Last week, my DragonWing Arts students painted large sheets of paper with black ink, and then painted over it as desired with a glittery paint.  These are going to become the backgrounds for colorful outer space collages.  We will also be splattering them with some white and silver paint, to create galaxies of stars. 

 So this week's task was to create some colorfully textured papers that can be cut into planets, or any other celestial object desired!  We did these several ways, using liquid watercolors and watercolor paper.  The technique used for the papers pictured in the photo at the top of this post was bubble-wrap printing.  The students wet their papers with a big brush, and then painted them with saturated colors.  Then, a piece of bubble wrap was placed on the wet paint, and some cardboard was placed on top to keep it in place as it dried.  Above are the results when dry. Yes, somehow I have purple bubble wrap!  The color has absolutely no function.  It's just pretty!

A similar process was used for the papers below, but instead of bubble wrap, students used crunched up pieces of wax paper and plastic wrap.  I love the color choices they made - there's paper created for an ice planet, and another for a fiery planet, and so on.

Students then saturated another piece of paper with wet watercolors and sprinkled them with salt. We used a mix of table salt and kosher salt.  The results, pictured below, are really lovely. 

 This one looks like it could be the earth!

Here's a couple more gorgeous closeups!

Finally, the students tried out shaving cream printing.  If you've never done this before, it is easy and messy, but its the kind of mess that cleans up easily.  Each student spread out some shaving cream on a tray.  They dripped liquid watercolors into the shaving cream, and swirled the colors with a fork or a pointy wooden stick. 

Then a piece of paper was pressed into the shaving cream, and the paper was squeegeed off afterward to remove excess shaving cream.  We used pop sticks today, but a rectangle of cardboard is also a great squeegee for this method.

 It's going to be fun to use all these papers to make our planets. If we have time, we will try some other techniques for even more planet paper!  Stay tuned...  we are working on a couple of other projects as well, so you won't be seeing the results for a few more weeks.

Surrealism in Space!

I came across a really cool post on the Italian blog Arteascuola, and decided to adapt the project to use with my after school DragonWing Arts students.  Thank you to blogger Miriam Paternoster for her great idea!  You can find her post, HERE.

There were three parts to creating the final project.  But before we even started, we discussed surrealism and and looked at images by various artists.  We noticed that many of the paintings created a sense of space and depth by using perspective.  So of course we had to discuss what linear perspective is!  Then we were able to start.

Step 1 was creating the background, and outer space sky.  We painted with black ink, and let it dry.  Then we painted on some glittery purple paint (it was a free sample I was given at a convention, and the consistency is rather thin and jelly-ish and doesn't cover well at all, but it create a nice effect great over black).  We also splatter painted some white tempera paint.  When it was dry, metallic and glittery markers and colored pencils were used to add some planets and stars and such.

Step 2 was to create a simple room interior on a separate paper, using one-point perspective.  We used the vanishing point and our rulers to create a checkered pattern on the floor, and also to place some doors and windows.  The rooms were painted with liquid watercolors, and salt was added as desired o make a funk textural look to the walls and floor.  When the paint was dry, some details were added with Sharpie, and the windows and doors were cut open.  Some were cut out completely, and others were cut so that they could open and close.  The ceilings were completely cut away. 

Here we are, ready to cut out our ceilings and doors.  

The Sharpie embellishments haven't been added yet.

Step 3 was assembly and magazine collage.  The parts were glued together, and students picked images to put in their rooms and skies.  I was originally planning to cut a window flap in the skies, and take and print photos of the kids so they could be entering through the window.  Thank goodness I didn't tell the kids about this plan, since we ran out of time and never got to it!  The pic below shows the work created in steps 1 and 2, ready to be assembled.

The pics below are the finished pieces, after the magazine collage was added and everything was glued together.  (We used Elmer's Glue-All applied with a paintbrush.)   The pic at the top of the post is another of the complete pieces.

I have just 4 kids in the class this fall, which sometimes makes an odd dynamic.  I had great expectations for the kids putting things like giant hamburgers or ice cream cones or insects or tubes of toothpaste in the room or in the windows, or a fish flying through the sky, and so on. I made an example with a giant foot coming through a door, and a large hand reaching in a window, as well as a huge eyeball and a lizard, and a chocolate chip cookie.  I had loads of magazines - nature, home, and more, and so I was very surprised at the odd choices the kids ultimately made.  I've been teaching a long time, and usually kids would have been intrigued by my example but these kids had other ideas, decidedly different from my expectations.  But I think they are pretty cool, nevertheless!!!

Layered landscape collages with textured watercolored papers

The theme of this 8-week session of DragonWing Arts was "SCAPES - Landscapes, Seascapes, Cloudscapes, Dreamscapes!".  My students completed several projects, including the toothpaste batiks I previously told you about in this post.  This week we finished another project, that I've been planning since the first class.  But, as usual, we ran out of time, so these fun layered landscape collages, with textured water-colored papers, were assembled in less than one hour.  This explains why I was not too picky when the kids sometimes didn't layer the landscapes properly.  We just didn't have time to nitpick!  The lively colorful piece pictured above was made by a third grade boy.

 We were in such a hurry to get done, I didn't get great photos of the completed projects, so these pics will have to do.  I especially loved the decision of the second grade girl who made the piece above, to work vertically and let her waves extend beyond the frame of the page.

 The landscape above was created by a third grade boy, and outlined with black Sharpie.  The papers used for these collages were created in prior art classes.  The base paper, which became the sky, was made using tube watercolors, on watercolor paper, textured with salt.  Below is a sampling of what they looked like.  We used some kosher salt for the first time, along with regular table salt, and it was rather strange.  It stuck to the watercolor paper and wouldn't come off!  So we left it there!

The mountain landscape below was created by a second grade girl. Papers used for the collages were created by marbling with liquid watercolors and shaving cream, and also using watercolors with bubble wrap, wax paper, or saran wrap applied to it.

Below is a sampling of some of the papers my four students created.  We used tube watercolors on watercolor paper.  I had experimented with liquid watercolors and wasn't satisfied with the results.  I had several sample tubes of liquid watercolors, and these worked great, since there was enough pigment to really make the textures show up.

 I think I need to invest in a drying rack! 

Back in April, we marbled some paper using shaving cream and liquid watercolors.  I wrote about the process here.  In that post, I didn't divulge what we were going to do with the marbled paper.  Which was a good thing, since we ran out of time to do everything I'd planned.  But I can tell you now that my original plan was to do landscape silhouettes with black ink on the marbled paper.  Instead, we incorporated the marbled papers into our landscape collages. 

 I had planned to have more time for the students to make these magical landscape collages, to look like some imaginary or fantasy landscape.  But we just lacked the time to add some of the extras I had intended.  Still, I love the way they turned out, and I'm proud of my kiddos for digging in and getting them complete in time for their final "art show" with their parents!

Here's my proud students showcasing all the work they completed this spring!

Like I said earlier, I've previously told you all about those circular "toothpaste batiks".  In a subsequent post, I promise will explain the colorful cityscapes and the two other smaller pieces the kids are showing, one of which was great fun in the making, but not exactly as successful as I'd hoped.  Live and learn!! 

 Look  under the table in the picture below.  There's a photo bomber!!