Continuous Line Art Drawing ::: Owls

I've been trying to make more time for art around here. Last year (or was it the year before?) we had a great system of pulling something out on Fridays after Bible study and doing a project together. My girls are getting old enough now that they do a lot of crafting on their own without assistance - which is great! - but I missed planning out little projects so that we could do something together. Any truthfully, if I didn't plan something, then *I* don't get a chance to sit down and create either!

I found this idea on Meg Deurksen's Whatever blog this summer and loved it. We visited her post first and watched the video she did on how to do a continuous line drawing of an owl. Before I watched that, I would have said, of course I couldn't draw an owl, that would be too hard! But the fact that the continuous line drawing isn't perfect, and you want it to be a little off for interest, helped with that fear.



This was my owl that I drew after watching her video. I wish I had though to get photos of the girls' owls before, but I didn't. (N1 and N2 did this craft with me. B started out drawing owls and then moved on to hearts and pictures of her family. : ))











My finished owl. I'm almost wishing I had left him uncolored because he looked super cool in black and white, but I like him colored as well.



N1's is on the left; N2 on the right. Both of these girls even took paper and markers to our last Classical Conversations and for their presentations did a demonstration of how to do a continuous line drawing of an owl. I have an idea percolating for Thanksgiving to do a drawing of a turkey along these lines - wouldn't that be fun to draw and color while watching holiday movies. : )

A fun return to crafting for us and the owl seemed particularly appropriate for a fall project.

Not Enough Hours in the Day

Life is very full right now.

March brings with it two girls playing soccer and one getting ready to start softball practice. A husband preparing and practicing for an Easter service. Friends having babies, parents and daughter and brother-in-law having birthdays. The calendar is f.u.l.l.

So when I can’t even really think straight to make a list of what I need to be doing, what do I do instead. Dump an entire box of Fruit Loops (or the generic Aldi’s equivalent, Fruit Rounds) into a bowl and hand out string. Little girls (especially the littlest) sat still for 45 minutes while I finished our current read aloud and we found out what happened with Winona and the pony. (We needed to finish it).

It was a good reminder to me that I really need to do more of these activities with the girls and not always wait until I’m caught up on everything. They didn’t mind that it was simple and thrown together at the last minute. They did like that I sat with them and said “yes” and not “later.”

The “later” days are dwindling when they think making fruit loop round necklaces pass for a cool pastime. I need to soak in more of them.

Painting the Color Wheel

For several days, B has been asking if she could paint something. This isn't a normal request from her as she is usually too busy to sit still that long - she is our on-the-move girl for the most part. After several days of this request, we set aside some time on Wednesday morning to get our paints out and play for a bit. This is one of those things that I don't do near enough of with my girls. While I'm a crafty person, I'm not a messy crafter. : ) Combine that with a boy that climbs on everything, I was hoping the painting request would fade into the background.

However, on Wednesday the boy went down for his morning nap and while I was debating going ahead and starting our book/unit study on Ben Franklin, I realized that there was no good reason not to get out a painting project and have a little fun. I recently purchased an e-magazine from Hearts and Trees all about color. I'd heard great things about her art kits in the past, but had never purchased one, and when I saw she had moved to an e-magazine format, I decided to try it.



I printed out a page with color wheel flashcards on it and gathered what paint I had in the primary colors. (Note to self: restock yellow and blue!) T recently replaced my cookie sheets for my birthday and I had the fleeting thought that the old ones would make great pans to paint in for art so we dug those out as well.



My artistic one LOVED this project. We started out painting the three primary colors.





After we painting our primary colors, we swirled the edges of the paint together to show how secondary colors were made. (This photo of the colors makes me happy).



Concentrating hard on staying between the lines.





I know this is blurry, but I am a BIG fan of her big chocolate eyes. She was SO happy we were painting.





The colors above and below were all made with just the three primary colors and they girls loved seeing them emerge as we mixed!





By the time, we got to the tertiary colors (blending secondary colors with primary colors) I was busy helping so no more pictures of painting in progress. However, I thought their finished works turned out pretty great!



It was a relaxed morning for us enjoying each other and being creatively. (Although, mamas know that it's never really relaxing with paint out, but you understand what I mean!) : ) This is one way in which I'm trying to be more present and all here with my family this year so I think we're off to a pretty good start.

Friday Fun School // Week 1

As part of our schooling adventures this year, we have planned for an "unschooling" fun Friday every week. We go to Bible study in the morning and then spend our afternoons with our friends, the B family, doing some sort of activity, whether it is a craft project, outdoor adventure, or service project.

This week was our first Friday Fun School, and although the two mamas were about to keel over from exhaustion when it was done, it went great. Thanks to a couple of great ideas from some of my favorite crafty blogs, we were prepared, the kids had a ball, and no one was hurt in the making of this craft. : )

First, we started with our craft. I hit up one of my FAVORITE craft blogs (and just for all round photography and color and mama inspiration) Whatever. Meg posted a very cool butterfly canvas craft several months ago and we decided that would be the perfect project to kick of our Friday activities. For those that are interested, we had seven kids tackling this project and they all thoroughly enjoyed it - we had five girls (ages 10, 7, 5, 5 and 4) and two boys (8 and 3). (We also had two little boys, 20 months and 11 months, who were taking naps during this time). Busy!

I brought in Travis' laptop so that I could show them what our end result was supposed to look like.



I even dug out my not glamorous industrial apron from Sam's in case I got hit with a random paint brush somewhere during the event.



Next up: painting our watercolor paper with bold strokes and bright colors. Then we let this dry so that we could eventually punch our butterflies out from it. My tip: spend the extra dollars and buy the watercolor paper. I was so glad I did. It gives your butterflies a little extra bit of texture to them and the color from the paint stays so much better.



Note our bold and bright painting shirts. : )





After putting our watercolor paper aside to dry, the kids each picked out a color of acrylic paint and painted their canvas. (No pictures of that). Then, as our watercolors and canvases began to dry, we began punching out butterflies and gluing them on.



I thought all our used, punched out watercolor trash was pretty. : )



While we were waiting for things to dry, we snacked. Cake batter blondies. Super easy, super good. Another of our little plans for our Friday school is to have the kids take turns making the snacks (reading the recipe, following the directions, etc.) and this recipe is perfect for that.



The finished products:



This was a big project for our first Friday. I don't know that every week will be as complicated, but for kicking off our year, it was perfect. And, I know how three original works of art hanging in our dining room. : )