So as it turns out, we have been very sporadic in our 100 days of art project. Rather than 100 Days in Which We Do Art Every Single Day, it’s turned into 100 Days in Which We Do Art Sometimes. That’s an improvement over the number of days we’d been doing art, though, so I’m still marking it down as a win.
Last week we started making some papier mache bowls. We let them dry for far more days than they actually needed, and then when we went to paint them I realized that our paint had all dried out. I tried to resuscitate it with some water, but it was too far gone for me to save. I’ve added Acrylic Paint to my ever-lengthening list of Art Supplies We Need.
So instead of painting our little bowls on Monday, we took our inspiration from Beautiful Hello and made our own geometric watercolors. Pete requested a LEGO Darth Vader, and Poppy wanted to make a cat. I found some silhouettes online and printed them, and the kids started tracing them onto watercolor paper. Pete grew tired of the project pretty quickly (this seems to be a recurring theme), so I took over the Vader project. We made dots and lines on our paper, and eventually it turned into some very cool artwork. This has been my favorite project so far.
Yesterday I wanted to try to do some sketched copies of photos. I put a grid over our photos in Photoshop and measured a grid out onto our papers, then we started to sketch the image square-by-square. Poppy abandoned the project after one square, and Pete never started. I finished mine, though, and then I colored it in with watercolor pencils. It is not terrific, but I’ve never done any portraits at all before so I figure it came out pretty, pretty OK.
This week I discovered that I love watercolor pencils. We only have two packs of them, one in earthy tones and one in primary colors. I’d like to get some more. What’s your favorite art supply?