Cornucopia of Ink

Ink has many uses that are fun and versatile. Here are just a few ideas for ink fun.
1. Ink with paints/watercolors. Here I have watercolors, pencils, brushes, canvas, a bamboo ink pencil, and ink. (If you are going to use watercolors on the canvas make sure you get a canvas that is suitable for watercolors, otherwise the canvas doesn't soak up the water. That is what happened in my case.)

2. Pick an image you are interested in creating and draw it out on the canvas. Since we are in November I decided to go with a cornucopia.

3. Next go over your pencil drawing with ink. You can use a brush or in my case I used a bamboo ink pencil with the ink.

 

4. Once the ink has dried, which is only a few minutes, you can start adding your colors.

 

 

Another way to use ink is by adding water to it and creating it as a wash.

Here is what the ink and watercolors look like when you use a watercolor paper with it.

 

Scribble Technique

 The Scribble Technique is great to do when you are completely stumped on what to create.  It gets the imagination fired up!
1. Get a piece of paper any size and color.  Also grab any art materials you want to work with.

2. Use a pencil or crayon and with your non-dominate hand scribble on the sheet of paper.  I like to do this with my eyes closed as well.

3. Now look at your scribble and search real good to find and image.  You can rotate the page around and around until you see an image.  I had to flip mine upside down to finally see something.
4. Once you see an image amongst the scribbles then expand on it and further create the image by using all the art materials you enjoy.

October Abstracted

Celebrate October!
1. For this project I used tissue paper, construction paper, a small canvas, and Mod Podge.  You can add as many materials as you like, that's the fun of abstract art!

2. Choose your main focus for October.  I picked a pumpkin, but you are more than welcome to pick any image you desire, such as, a skeleton, witch, moon, black cat, ghost, etc.
3. Draw out your image on construction paper and cut the image out.  I also cut the image more so I can make it more abstract looking for later.

4. Next, brush on the Mod Podge on the blank canvas.
5. Rip up the colors of tissue paper you are interested in using and start placing them on the canvas on top of the Mod Podge.

6. Keep adding the tissue paper until you are satisfied with the look of it.

7. Now add the main image and place it in a manner that you are happy with and still looks abstract.

8. Add more tissue paper and any extra materials you would love to work with, keep going until you love it!

Tissue Paper Mandalas

This is a great meditative art directive.  

1. Have a variety of colored tissue paper.

2. Print out an image of any kind.  I chose a mandala image for this project.

3. Have a larger piece of paper to cut out and glue down your image.  I only do this to give myself a bigger area to work with and to give extra support for the picture to hold the weight of the tissue paper.  If you print the image on a heavy grade paper then you don't need to paste it down on another larger piece.

4. Start ripping up your first color of tissue paper into small 1 inch x 1 inch squares or larger if you want larger size tissue balls.
5. Take one of the squares and roll it into a small ball and glue it down in the place you want.

6.  Continue this with different colors and start to fill in the entire image with the small tissue balls until you are completed.  

Fabric Weave

I use a fabric glue, that you can get at any store that sells fabric, to put this piece together.  There is no sewing involved with this piece.

1. You want to cut up a minimum of two styles of fabric; one in 4 inch x 12 inch strips and the other in 4 inch x 9 inch.  You can go 4 inch x ___ inch depending on how big you want your art piece.

2. Once you have your strips, you are going to take one strip at a time and glue each edge down to hide the frayed edges.  Then you will fold the strip in half to make the strip thicker and so both sides look the same.  They should look like this.  At this point don't worry about the fray that is at the very end of the strip, the border that we put on later will hide it.

3. You should have one set of long strips and another set that are slightly shorter.

4. Now you can begin to weave your colors together.  When you weave your first strip make sure you glue all the little squares, do this for this one only and for the very last strip you put in.

5. When you weave your second strip only glue down the very top square that you started and the very bottom square.  Do not glue all the squares in the middle because it won't end up soft at the end.

6. Continue step 5 until you have weaved all the way to the end.  When you get to the last strip make sure you glue down all the squares on the last strip.  So now all the 4 edges around your weave pattern should all be glued and there should be NO glued strips in the middle.  The middle should be glue free.

7. Now take a third color and create a boarder for your weave piece.  Make sure you glue this boarder down.  The boarder is the finishing piece and the piece to hide the rest of the frayed ends.

Identity Hands

This is a great "Get to Know You" project.
1) On a sheet of paper place your hand down and out line it with any art medium.
2) Design the inside of the drawn hand with something that describes who you are.
3) Share what you have created.
* If this is a group project:
4) Have everyone cut the hand shape out.
5) Paste everyones' hand shape on one giant board so all the hands are together in one place.
6) Name each hand and then share what you have created.

Create to the Music

This exercise is very freeing.
1) Have a mix of music ready.
2) Have a variety of art materials such as water colors, chalk, oil pastels, etc.
3) Place in front of you a large sheet of paper.
4) Turn on the music, grab a drawing utensil, close your eyes, and begin to create on the paper how you feel the music would look like in colors.
5) When the song changes, grab a different drawing material and start again on the same piece of paper or a different one.

Water Color Sun Catchers

These are coffee filters!
1. Water colors
2. Unused coffee filters
3. Paint your coffee filters with the water colors.
4. Let the filters dry.
5. Clothes pin
6. Take the dried painted coffee filter and start pulling it into the clothes pin until you get a shape that looks like butterfly wings.
7. Take a string and tie it around the body of the clothes pin so you can hang your sun catcher in the window.
8. Hang in a sunny window.

Mini Me's

Mini Dolls is fun at all ages.
1) You will need clothes pins.  Try to pick out the ones that resemble a human form.
2) Use pipe-cleaners for the arms.  Below is an example on how to wrap the pipe-cleaners to make them look like arms.
3) Use fabric swatches for the clothes.
4) For the face I just drew it on with markers.
5) Use yarn for the hair.
6) Create your Mini Me!

Name That Herb!

This is a fun exercise to do!  It's simple and fun.  Let's wake up the Olfaction!

1) Have a variety of fresh herbs.

2) Place a leaf of one herb in the person's hand.

3) Have them smell and guess what herb it is.

4) Do this with all the herbs you have.

That's it! 

Sand Vessels

I find this project to be very meditative.
1. You will need an empty glass vessel with a lid.
2. For the sand you have two choices:
A. You can buy sand that already has color in it.
B. You can make your own colored sand by buying white sand (if you live by a beach or sand
dune you can collect free sand) and use colored chalk to color the sand.
           1. On a large sheet of paper poor a small mound of the white sand on the paper.
           2. Then take one color of chalk and begin rubbing the sand with the chalk.  Make sure you are holding the chalk horizontally to cover more of the sand. Keep rubbing the chalk into the sand until all the sand is colored.
3. Take one color of sand (ex. red sand) and poor some into the glass vessel.  It's always best to poor about 1/2 inch because the more layers the better.  But it is your jar so poor as much as you like.
4. If you are making your own colored sand repeat step (B) to make your next color.  Take a second color and poor in another layer of colored sand into the jar.  Keep repeating this process until your jar is full with different layers of colored sand.
5. Get a piece of thin gauged wire, such as, a wire coat hanger.  Make sure the piece of wire is the length of the vessel, this way you will be able to reach the bottom.
6. With the wire piece poke the inside sides of the glass vessel to begin making the design.  Make sure you slide the wire down the sides of the glass as best you can to create a design.  Keep doing this around the entire jar until you are satisfied with the sand design you achieved.
7. Once you have finished poking the sand put the lid on the glass vessel.  If you have any space between the sand and the lid make sure you fill it with more sand.  There should be no air between the lid and the sand, we want it as tight as possible.  This way if the jar ever fell the sand won't get all mixed up.

Marble Splatters

 Great for all ages

1. Get a shallow box, like the top and bottom of a shoe box.  2. *Place a blank piece of paper on the bottom of the box.

3. Place globs of your favorite color of paint onto the paper in the box.

4. Drop two marbles in the box and begin tilting the box back and forth to create a painting using the marbles.

* We used a blank envelope and card stock to create matching cards and envelopes.

Collage Scenery

Great for all ages.
Prep by cutting out images of people from magazines.  Make sure you have an abundant amount from various cultural ethnicities.
1. Pick an image from the pre-cut pile that stands out to you the most.
2. Paste down the image on to a sheet of paper.
3. Create a landscape for the image you picked.