Name that sign!

This little project was a bit of fun, though it made me realise how much Henry actually knew about signs!

First I used by creativity to draw a few signs, and Henry identified each....amazingly he knew them all (not helped by my artistic skills)!

Then I asked Henry to draw me a sign warning about anything he wanted.....he came up with a tree across the road, which he drew and labelled for me.

I then suggested he did another. Very into his hens and the moment, he created a sign to warn that one of his hens was about - I might just have to stick that one to the back door to remind me!

This occupied us for about 15 minutes, but got him involved in being creative and imaginative, writing, sounding his letters and discussion.

Painting without paint or a brush!!!

Outdoor Hour - Challenge #3 - Time to draw

For Henry, who doesn't go a bundle on doing art work, i try to steer away from plain drawing or painting, trying to make the experience a little more unusual if possible.

Most days we get out for a walk with our dog. So for yesterday's walk i took a bag to collect all kinds of things from nature that we might be able to use for an art project.

Henry got very into putting things into the bag...so much so we had an overflowing bag by our return home! During our walk i asked Henry to think of what we could use to draw or paint with, with some help he suggested sticks and feathers. I picked some blackberries and elderberries and got Henry to guess what we might use these for, he was very intrigued by the idea of making paint from them......even more so wh

en i told him we would paint with mud when we got home!

Back home i put all our findings out on a piece of paper and provided a fairly absorbent type of paper for Henry to create his art work on.

To start with i suggested Henry try painting with

mud, He chose a stick and created brown lines all over his page.

Next Henry tried out squashing black berries then rolling them with a stick....beautiful purple designs started to develop. Amazingly, every blackberry had a slightly different colour! Elderberries were squashed and rolled, and finally back to the mud with a rose hip and a feather to create some more brown patterns.

I was totally amazed how well this idea worked. After a good hand wash, the very unusual piece of art has pride of place on our fridge! - whoever said you needed paint and a paintbrush to create a masterpiece!!!

Henry paints his bedroom!

This weekend we returned to our house in the UK to do a spot of decorating - namely Henry's bedroom.

One of the top floor rooms (in a three floor stone cottage of around 250 years old) is to be Henry's bedroom. It's last paint job however, was completed about 10 years ago when there were no thoughts of kids and Kevin and i were not even married. Hence the terracotta (Kevin calls it orange) colour of the walls!

We decided the room needed to be bright and either blue or green - we decided on green.

Henry was so excited about being involved in the painting of it, i was very impressed.

Dressed in one of my mum's old T shirts he enthusiastically got on with the paint job using a huge roller! Luckily the whole floor was covered in plastic and anything of importance removed from the room.....as Henry and paint get a little messy!

He stuck with it for about 20 minutes before getting bored the first time. We gave him his own wall and told him to paint it however he liked! Lots of crosses, race tracks and faces appeared on the wall which was fun.

Henry returned to paint three times in total over the weekend and was very helpful...i think! He is totally excited about moving into his room, and can claim to have painted it himself...how cool is that!

Car painting and washing

This is an idea that we first tried out last summer. Since then we have replicated the activity a number of times. Great for a warm day outside.

Last summer we attended a street art show, where the most occupied booth of the whole show was a real full sized car, being painted by kids. After putting on an apron, the kids were given paint and told to go make a masterpiece, it was amazing.

Henry went straight for the headlights with the yellow paint, then decorated it all over with purple sports here and there. It gave him an idea........He was going to paint mummy's car when we got home......It gave me an idea.......to let him loose with his washable paints on his outdoor ride in car (his Cosy Coupe).

Dressed in messy clothes Henry was very enthusiastic about the idea. The car was painted in a multitude of colours, and this activity kept him occupied the first time for hours! The second time not quite as long, but the novelty was still there.

After all that hard work painting the car, Henry got to work with water, a sponge and washing up liquid to clean the car, so he could start all over again.

This fun activity allowed him to create art on a large scale with absolutely no expectation or suggestion from me as to how he should do it. A great way to develop creativity i think.

Eric Carle Art project

Eric Carle books are favourites in our household. I never thought the art work in them was that impressive though. However, on a trip to the Du Page Children's museum, we created a piece of art work based loosely on Eric Carle's style of illustrations. A Fire truck.

I found out about his processes and became quite fascinated, so much so we completed the process at home.

Very simply, Eric Carle paints layers of differing colour on top of each other, letting each layer dry before adding the next. After that he draws an outline of the illustration. Then he cuts out shapes from the previously painted paper and adds them to create a design such as the Hungry Caterpillar.

If you want to follow the process in the correct order as we did, we discussed the subject that Henry wanted to create. He chose a dinosaur this time. Your choice of subject matter may influence the colour of paints you use to create your painted paper with. Henry just wanted to use every colour however and deal with what it made the dinosaur look like later!

We painted using water colour sponge brushes (the ones that already have paint in that you just dip in water). Rather than paint numerous layers, i just suggested to Henry he use a few different colours. - The paper before it dried.

Once dry, Henry cut the paper into random shaped bits. He loves cutting, and with no lines to follow, and the instruction "cut as many bits as you want" given, he was very enthusiastic about this bit!

Henry then drew the outline of the dinosaur then got sticking. To finish off the masterpiece he drew on the arms and legs with pen.

Henry's take on Eric Carle's art style!

Create a "Twombly" - Art project

After over two years in Chicago, my husband & I finally made it to the Chicago Art Institute last week. After browsing musch of the museum, we came across a tempory exhibit by Cy Twombly. My first comment to my husband was "I have to try this with Henry...he will manage one of these easily"!

Twombly's work is bright, bold, and appears to follow a simple technique; splodging paint on paper and letting it run to the bottom!

So today, Henry and I tried to replicate this famous artist's work.

We used water colour paper as a solid base to work on. Then Henry colour washed the paper to form a colourful base on which to work.

I then provided 4 different coloured paints for him to splodge with. Using a piece of balled up kitchen roll, Henry added paint to the paper a couple of times, before returning to get more paint.

To replicate Twombly as best we could to start with, I suggested Henry use just one splodging colour.

For our last piece however, I just let him loose on all the paints, but suggested he add each colour to the paper maybe only 4-5 times before moving to the next colour.

We worked on this for about half an hour, and I think we made a pretty good attempt at creating a Twombly!