Inspiration from Young at Art - ANIMAL PROJECTS

The San Francisco Youth Arts Festival "Young at Art" at the DeYoung Museum in May was full of so many creative, inventive and inspiring ideas for art exploration with kids. The following are a few of my favorite projects depicting many kids' favorite subject, ANIMALS!


This is a beautiful use of metallic color pencils on black matte board. The metallics really capture the opalescence of butterflies wings. These were mounted on a long piece of ribbon, but the would also be beautiful if cut out and used in a 3-D collage (imagine them on natural branches, dusted with silver or white glitter!)





Here's two projects that experimented with using watercolor to create texture. For the fish painting, I'd guess that the fish outline and large scales were created with white crayon (wax resist). The "water" background was texturized either with salt or water spritzed from a spray bottle (or both). I'd imagine that the background was done first then allowed to dry completely, and then the fish was painted in second (thus the contrast in textures).



For this funky ant, I think the background was "bubble painting" (put paint in a shallow dish, use a straw to bubble it up and then press the paper down on top) and then allowed to dry. The ant was created with black sharpie and oil pastels. I love the gesture of this ant's body. It reminded me of Egyptian hieroglyphics!






Here's two animal paitings that struck my eye. They feature very nice broad shapes to depict the animals in their natural settings. They reminded me of Henri Rousseau's work. The black sharpie defines the lines quite nicely. I'm not sure the paint used - it looks like gouache, but I'm thinking that most school budgets don't support the purchase of gouache. Maybe they used tempera cakes or very watery tempra? Either way, these would be great as illustrations to go with the 2nd and 3rd grade animal reports.






This was an interesting group project with different animal eyes painted with either fabric paints or acrylics on fabric. The resulting effect is pretty cool. I'm not sure what the artists titled this piece, but I'm thinking it should be called "I Got My Eyes on You!"






Aboriginal dot painting has long been a favorite of mine. It's a technique that kids can execute easily and most find it to be quite fun. Did you know that the Aborigines used dot painting as a storytelling method? It was a way to record and pass on ritual practices and traditional folk stories. They would use the pictures as a guide while reciting the story to the sounds of didgeridoo players. Often, the stories would be a sacred secret, so the dots were added to the painting to help camouflage the subject so that only those "in the know" would recognize it. Many times, the dot paintings depicted the aboriginal creation story "Dreamtime."






There were several other great animal projects, done in collage, so be sure to check out that blog entry as well for more ideas.