Monday, October 09, 2006

Making Do on Mondays: Using Different Mediums for Art Projects

Sometimes it's fun to do more with art projects than using the conventional colored pencils, markers, crayons and paints. These are some more adventerous ideas which children love and become really motivated by. I've done most of these projects with children and they don't ever want to stop.

~Start off with a regular peice of cardstock and then have the child (or you, depending on their age) draw a person... a figure of some sort, ie princess, cowboy, fireman, farmer, etc. It should fill the page, so that you will have room to decorate the different parts of this figure.

~Rather than them just coloring it in, have them do that in addition to adding texture with other materials:
~Yarn for hair.
~peices of construction paper, foil, and colorful/patterned material for the clothing and parts of body.
~ Pasta, glitter, wood chips and anything else you can think of for the backgrounds or the floor.

Rather than a character your child may decide to do an animal, in which case you could use all types of mediums for the habitat around the animal, such as green yarn or felt stuffing for a tree, blue construction paper for water, real wood bark for a tree, and so on.

Elmers glue works well but there are many types of good all-purpose glues which you can find in art supplies stores which are more efficient for all these mediums.

Elisa Kleven, a collage artist and author of children's books, has been the most inspiring artist to me for these types of projects. You may want to try to find a few of her books in your local library and look at it for ideas. Some of our favorites include: The Lion and the Little Red Bird, The Paper Princess, and B is for Bethlehem. She has some pictures which will give you a lot of great ideas.


~Sia, Vancouver, WA

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one of us :: 10:01 AM :: 1 Comments

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