First she mixed Plaster of Paris with water.

Next, she poured it into a pie plate mold.

Next, she shook all the air bubbles out and then waited for it to set up.

Later in the day she painted her creation!

This was a very fun project and I plan to try doing some different things with plaster.  I have some ideas for nature projects!

The idea for fresco painting came from my favorite artist project book, Discovering Great Artists by MaryAnn Kohl.

- Henri Matisse

This weekend my older daughter and I had a little mother/daughter time, which for us often times leads to something artsy (who says art can’t be done on off-school hours?).  Recently, we had checked out a book from our library called Over in the Artic, which is illustrated by Jill Dubin.  Ms. Dubin uses cut paper art for the illustrations.  I was really intrigued by this art, I think it’s beautiful!  Using scrap pieces of paper, any kind, you can create beautiful artwork.  Here is an example from the book (you can see more at her site):

I remembered that in our Discovering Great Artists: Hands-On Art for Children in the Styles of the Great Masters book there was an activity for Henri Matisse that was using this same type of style of art.  Mr. Matisse, made bright, joyful paper collages in simple shapes.  There is a online biography on Mr. Matisse here:  Henri Matisse Biography.  Also two great kid’s books to read to learn more are:

Henri Matisse (Getting to Know the World’s Greatest Artists)

Henri Matisse: Drawing with Scissors

So, we pulled out our scrapbook papers (which I hardly ever use for scrapbooking) and visualized in our minds the scenes we wanted to create, and got to work!  This was so much fun!

Hannah’s Beginning Work

Mom’s Beginning Work

Continuing to Work

Mom’s Finished Spring Scene

Hannah’s Desert Scene

 For the winter season our focus was on using the medium pen and ink.  I also took note of the fact that the artist used the technique cross hatching.  You can see it in the girl’s coat in this illustration from the book. 

I recognized it from another book that we are familiar with, Wee Gills by Munro Leaf, which has an abundance of the cross hatching technique used.  Wee Gillis also appears to be done in Pen and Ink.  So we also flipped through it to observe the medium and technique a bit more.

 Another observation from Nature’s Paintbox was that one of the illustrations was done from a “birds eye view”, so we also discussed that.

While completing our renderings, we pulled out our Vivaldi CD and finished up the final suite, Winter,  from The Four Seasons.  While drawing and listening we talked about what wintery visions the music brought to our minds:  a blizzard, snow floating down, squirrels scampering about, the wind whistling through the snow, etc.

Here are our ink drawings: 

 Links for the other seasons:

 Nature’s Paintbox – Spring

 Nature’s Paintbox – Summer

 Nature’s Painbox – Autumn