This week we created some spooky Halloween bunting using paper, chalk pastels and ribbon in our Wed & Thurs afternoon sessions. Some of the children enjoyed coming up with a story as they made the bunting, so the order of the pictures on the string followed the story order.
Everyone loved blending the pastels with a paint brush, a few tried out not blending one of their pictures but blended on the rest.
Next week during Halloween we are going to make some spooky Halloween collage masks.
Today the children began their final pieces for our display. Using the grid method we practiced last month they created larger version of the artwork in their sketchbooks, this took most of the session. The children also began adding yarn and paint to their drawings.
This week the toddlers have had lots of fun making some mischievous monsters. First we created some yarn wrapped monsters using rainbow wool, the children found wrapping the wool round tricky and needed some help from parents. They enjoyed sticking googly eyes and some goofy smiles on the finished monsters.
Next they painted a plate using bubble wrap, they really enjoyed this especially as they could mix red and white paint. We also made these monsters antennae using pipe cleaners, we wrapped them round pencils to make them curly.
Finally the children made some monster masks out of paper plates, we cut eye holes out and added the string, otherwise the toddlers did everything themselves. They were very proud of their masks and wanted photos of them wearing the masks (with parent/guardian permission).
Next week we will be making some spooky skeletons, ghosts and mummies.
This week our 4-9 year old group had the opportunity to learn and practice some brush techniques with some spooky Halloween paintings.
During the first half of the session the children first had to paint their backgrounds using two shades of blue and red for the paint. The children were told to use side to side brushstrokes so any lines left behind went the same direction. Next they put white paint on the tip of a paint brush and tapped it with another to do a technique called splatter painting. This technique was used to make the stars on their night skies.
Everyone did a fantastic job trying to follow the instructions.
During the second half of the session while waiting for the backgrounds to dry the children drew and painted their foreground images on a separate piece of paper. The only limitation was they needed to make a Halloween themed foreground, otherwise they could choose. We ended up with some spooky pumpkins, flying witches, spooky ghosts, sneaky cats, quiet bats and mischeavous monsters.
Next week we will be making our own D.I.Y Halloween bunting.
During our second drafting session two of the children finished their draft ideas and the third tested out yarn painting with adhesive paper instead of glue. They found the adhesive paper worked a lot better as any folds and bends stayed in place a lot better than previous attempts in their sketchbook with glue. The other children ended up being quite taken with the appearance of yarn painting so all three have ended up deciding on using it in their final pieces.
Next week the children will begin creating their final pieces for our display.
This week the toddlers enjoyed exploring found autumnal objects and using them with clay for making a hedgehog and experimenting with mark making. We had sweet chestnuts, acorns, sycamore seeds, beech nuts, ash keys, pinecones, twigs and leaves. We only looked at the sweet chestnut cases to see where the chestnuts come from as they are a too prickly to touch.
For our first activity we warmed our hands up rolling, patting and pinching the terracotta clay before making an egg shape out of it which we pushed twigs into. Once we finished doing this we used the acorn hats and sycamore seeds to make eyes and a nose. One of the toddlers made her hedgehog feet out of the sycamore seeds.
During the next part of the session we had lots of fun exploring mark making with the white clay. We had the autumnal objects and two bracelet with stone beads. The children realised they could use the acorn hats to cut circles out of the clay and had lots of fun with this. They also enjoyed printing with the leaves, cones and bracelets.
During the last fifteen minutes the children chose a shape to cut out of the clay and make into a hanging decoration. They then chose their favourite mark making objects to decorate their shapes.
Next week we will start our Halloween theme creating some monsters.
This week the 4-9 year olds have been creating some still life drawings with the extra challenge of they are only allowed to use coloured pencil crayons. This was a tricky challenge which made the children look carefully at what colours and shapes they could see. At times we had a few tears and drawings of rainbow pumpkins when frustration set in but I was thoroughly impressed at how much time, effort and care everyone put into their observational drawings, with some of the children including texture, not just representation of colour and shape. Our youngest members particularly found it tricky and displayed great perseverance which I believe paid off.
Next week we will be starting our Halloween theme with some spooky night time paintings.
This week the Friday group have started planning what animal and materials they would like to use for their contribution to our display. They had access to watercolour paint, acrylic paint, chalk pastels, drawing pens, oil pastels and collage materials. One of the children quite enjoyed limiting themself to using just yarn for their fox. We did some research and found out it is called yarn painting when you make a picture using just yarn and an adhesive. They were struggling to get the wool to stick with pva so next week we will be trying adhesive paper.
Everyone has put a lot of care and effort into their artwork, I can’t wait to see the end results.
This week our toddlers had lots of fun making a prickle of hedgehogs, parliament of owls and scurry of squirrels!
We had a box of different materials in all sorts of autumnal colours and textures for the toddlers to explore whilst they created their hedgehogs. We also had some googly eyes for extra fun!
For our squirrels we had lots of tissue paper to rip up and scrunch together before sticking on with the googly eyes.
For our owls we had chalk pastels and paint brushes, the children loved blending the chalk pastels colours together with a paintbrush.
After each animal set was made the children loved placing them altogether and counting how many animals we have in each group. They also enjoyed making owl noises.
Next week we will be making some prickly Hedgehogs out of clay, sticks, acorn hats and sycamore seeds! We will also be experimenting with mark making in clay.
This week the children have been exploring negative space and coming up with ideas of how to fill that space. They created the negative space by placing a leaf on a sheet of paper and rubbing chalk pastel over it. Below is an example of what negative space looks like before the children fill it.
Some of the children used the leaf negative space to jigsaw together a picture they wanted. Meanwhile others created the negative space and then came up with how they wished to fill it. The children used a mix of chalk pastel, oil pastel and googly eyes to create their art work.
One child created a pattern with their lines outside the negative space.
Overall everyone had fun experimenting and using their creativity. Next week we will be practicing our still life drawing skills with some Autumnal objects.
Primrose Art Club 