Our school wide art project

Wings

She was here!! Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!

Kelsey Montague! She was here in my town painting beautiful interactive murals all over my city and I missed it! Here I am teaching my kiddos all about her, watching her videos, looking at her work and creating our very own tribute to her beautiful murals and she was here… last month. Oh, what I would have given to be able to go see her in action, painting wings and -gasp, meet her! But, I missed it…

Wings in Scottsdale!

One of my students came up to me and casually said “I saw the wings.” What? Where? “At the hockey arena.” Wait. What? I frantically typed her name and PHOENIX into the search engine and there were not one but FIVE new beautiful murals around town!

How could I have missed her? For the past few weeks my classes have been talking about murals and looking at the beautiful work of Ms. Kelsey Montague. We are in the process of creating beautiful painted wings for a mural that students can interact with and invite our community into our annual art walk. This year our art walk is combined with our science night for a fabulous STEAM night event we are calling A Night in our Museum!

We started by painting papers. Each grade level focused on painting different color values of our chosen color palette. Students used their color with white and then black to create beautiful value scales on mixed media paper. By the end of the week, we had A LOT of painted papers!

Students then used white prisma color pencils to design their individual feathers. My amazing PTO moms helped me assemble and seal the painted paper feathers to two 4×8 painted wood boards.

Our finished mural was 4 feet tall and 16 feet wide and it is SO fabulous! It was a hit at the STEAM night! The kids loved standing in front of the installation for a photo opportunity!

Our amazing collaborative mural inspired by the fabulous Kelsey Montague now proudly hangs in our school hall.

Click here to find Kelsey Montague Art wings close to you!

For the Love of Eric Carle

Leave a Comment / 1st Grade Lessons, 2nd Grade Lessons, Collaborative Art, Eric Carle / bloomingartaz

Collaborative mural by Blooming Artists – Enrichment Class Spring 2020

My heart broke the day I heard that our beloved Eric Carle had passed away. For 91 years he filled the hearts of children, and the young at heart, with joy with his whimsical and colorful art made especially for kids.

“In the light of the moon, holding on to a good star, a painter of rainbows is now traveling across the night sky”

In case it is your first day on this planet and you have never heard of Eric Carle, he is the author and illustrator of wonderful children’s books such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Very Busy Spider, The Grouchy Ladybug and so many more. I have read them hundreds of times to my children and students alike. So many of my art lessons are inspired by his colorful and whimsical illustrations. Every one of my students know how to create beautiful painted papers and use them for their collage art in the fabulous Carle style.

One of my bucket list items was to visit the Eric Carle picture book museum in Amherst, Massachusetts.

If you haven’t had a chance to visit, for Carle lovers, it is a dream to see his original artwork and story boards for his books. Housed in a museum filled with his enormous playful paintings, walking into this museum is like walking into one of his books! For a quick glimpse inside click HERE.

This week my kindergarten classes have been learning about Eric Carle’s collage art style. We have been reading his books and having lengthy discussions about how he created his beautiful painted papers. We painted papers to create these adorable painted paper texture turkeys.

Aren’t these little texture turkeys fabulous?

The process is easy:

We used very well used messy mats (12×18 construction paper) that were pretty much covered with all colors of paint anyway.

Paint the entire paper with one color tempera paint
Add dots or stripes in a second color
Use texture tools, rollers or scrapers to add texture
Repeat as long as time allows

I love this process for children of all ages. It is such a wonderful process in creating beautiful papers for very rich looking artworks.

Students had fun painting their papers and using the various tools to create interesting and varied designs and textures on their papers.

What Eric Carle inspired projects do your classes create? Let me know in the comments below.

For the Love of Eric Carle Read More »

Collaborative Art

Painted Collaborative Wings