StoryArt on CrafTuesday - Olivia

 

My girls are of an age where sibling rivalry is abundant.  They are very competitive, especially Payton, and whenever they are doing something, it's not long before the question of "which one is the best" comes up. 

Because Morgan is older and therefore has more experience under her belt, whenever we are working on art, especially, she often has a hard time complimenting her sister and her latest drawing or creation, thinking she could do a better job.

I'm always saying "all art is beautiful".  There is ALWAYS something nice you can say about a piece of art created by someone else.  This would apply to scrapbooking too. 

With art in mind, creativity in mind, and freedom to create, the next story for StoryArt is




Olivia, by Ian Falconer.

Who doesn't love this little pig?

Olivia is another constant character in our bookshelves.  Love her.

Olivia is the first book in the series, and is in black and white, with little touches of red.
At one point in the story, Olivia visits a museum and spots paintings by Jackson Pollock, determines she can do that on her own, and proceeds to get in trouble by creating an inspired painting on the wall of her home.  whoops!

Because it's summer and my girls have low attention spans these days, preferring otter pops and a sprinkler here and there, I thought this would be a fun, but quick and easy art project to celebrate the freedom to create with wild abandon, and to celebrate art for the sake of art.

I was googling around for Jackson Pollock info to bring more art history to my girls and came across this lesson plan:

http://www.storyboardtoys.com/gallery/Jackson-Pollock-lesson-plan.htm

Payton has done something similar to this in preschool when making spider webs for Halloween crafts, so this is a fun option to try.

Supplies:
Cookie sheet
Cardstock
Poster paint
marbles (we robbed Chinese Checkers, but I considered Hungry Hippos too, lol)
paper bowls


Start by putting some paint and a marble in each paper bowl  I was going to do just black and red, like the story, but figured in the end it was about the process, and more color is better anyway.  :)

I used a glue dot to hold their paper down on their cookie sheet so they wouldn't float around.  Then it was a matter of dropping a painted marble onto the paper, and picking up the tray to move it around as they chose.

They both ended up with a little finger paint, which was totally fine, and had fun with their projects.  Payton actually did a couple of these prints and enjoyed the process and freedom of not quite knowing how things were going to turn out. 

This one is Morgan's:

And here's one of PJ's:

She called this one "Rainbow Angel".  Cute!

It was a fairly quick and extremely easy project, but it lasted long enough for the girls to ask me to do them more often.

After we were done we read a few more Olivia books, just because.
Visit this website for some fun computer artwork you can do 'a la Pollock'.

http://www.jacksonpollock.org/

I got a bit distrcted there myself, lol.

Have a great day!  Davinie