Crafternoons

         Summer vacation is just around the corner and with this in mind I thought I would share some of our favourite crafting resources. First up is the Get In Art books- we have the Animals volume and it is so very inspiring. The idea is the book is both an art history lesson and an art project rolled into one was lesson. Taking a famous piece of art and talking about the artist and then translating that into a very easy to follow- family friendly project. Quite simply put we love this.

          Recently- one afternoon with The Boy at a friend's house- my girl and I set up in our favourite spot for creating- out on our deck in the warm breeze. We carefully looked through the book and eventually settled on a lesson about Edward Bawden- an English painter and graphic designer/ printmaker.

         Known for his illustrations of birds this project is based on the fabulous feathers represented in many of Edward Bawden's fine fowl! A mixed media piece- we started out sketching a peacock on a nice heavy piece of water colour paper- heavy paper is needed for projects like these- I quite like student quality watercolour paper. Once our birds were sketched out we started to fill in our drawing with oil pastels- creating a resist for the acrylic paints in the next step.

           This reduction technique is so much fun- magical to small children but equally fascinating for seasoned artists. Once our drawing was fully coloured in with oil pastels we took acrylic paint and painted all over our entire drawing- covering all our beautiful colouring work. Using a popsicle stick we removed paint from specific areas in the drawing- creating a pattern of feathers and outlining details of the bird- revealing the colourful oil pastels underneath.

            I so love hanging out one on one with my Littles- it doesn't happen very often making our time together even more special. My girl declared that her favourite thing to do with me is make art- this is of course something that warms my heart!

         With the dogged days of Summer just around the corner I would highly recommend Get Into Art- Animals. My kiddos love the animals- might remember something about the famous art artists I talk about- they will definitely remember hanging out on the deck with Momma in the shade creating fantastic works of art!