more art class

I wanted to show off some more art class projects.  The kids picked a couple of drawings out of my sketchbook and we re-drew them together step by step in their own little sketchbooks.  I think they did a great job.  I learned that we need to practice sketching lightly first and then going over with clear finished lines.  The kids tend to draw the same dark lines no matter what, then they were frustrated that they could erase them well.

fierce & funny dragons 

gggggggggreat tigers!

This week we did some projects gearing up for St. Patrick’s Day.  We loosely followed this tutorial and made rainbow colored folded accordion springs.  They are a lot of fun to bounce around, but we haven’t found gold at the end of them. . . yet!  

We looked at some of the Celtic knots that predated the Christians in Ireland, and at the beautiful decorations of the Book of Kells from the early Christian missionaries to Ireland.  St. Patrick used the shamrock (or 3 leafed clover) to teach the Irish about the Godhead, each leaf being one member.  I found a Celtic knot shamrock image online and we used it to practice shading with colored pencils to better illustrate how the strings in the knot are woven together.  

Then we watched a few short segments of The Secret of the Kells DVD, (one of my FAVORITE movies from the animation viewpoint) to show how the animators repeated the knot motif throughout the movie.  AJ & J were so interested in the knots that I printed out a whole bunch more for them to color the next day.  S and her friend both tried their hand at drawing their own knots.  We drew a pattern with a wide, light colored marker and then went in afterwards and to detail which lines were on top and bottom with a thin, black pen.  The wide light lines help you keep the black outlines the same width apart and help you see if all your twists are going to be able to connect up.

I'm not even going to admit how many of my own knot designs I messed around with getting ready for this lesson!