paper flowers

happy belated mother's day!

some of my students have been working on making their own painted paper to create paper flowers with.  this project has taken longer than what i originally intended because i have insisted that the students paint both sides of each paper that they made.  i just think the flowers are so much stronger with the back sides of the petals having a painted pattern on them as well. 

so each student painted the front and back of two 9x12 watercolor sheets.  i wanted them to think about making the second sheet a different color palette and pattern than the first so that the inner part of the flower would really stand out from the petal part.

then we used patterns i had made to cut out the flower parts from the painted paper, and assembled them using pipe cleaners and beads.  they are not all finished yet, but so far, so good!

i hope you all had a wonderful mother's day. 


this week, here's to moms!

-julia

may flowers

we have been working on these since spring first hit.  just was in the mood for some colorful flowers.  for this lesson, i was inspired by this post i remembered seeing on art projects for kids a while back.  both my class and my private students are doing these paintings with watercolors.  this project is in rotation with 2 other projects, so they are not all finished yet, but you get the idea.  we are really having fun with these!

my private students are doing the watercolor painting and then a similar one digitally.  for this project, we are using the paper 53 sketchbook app on the ipad.  i thought it presented a good opportunity for them to really compare and contrast the two mediums.  then, when they are finished, they have the actual painting and a print out of the digital version. 

hope you are all having a colorful spring!

here's to may flowers!

-julia