Impasto Painting Like Vincent Van Gogh

Impasto is a painting technique where the paint is laid on the surface thickly so that you can see the texture of the brush strokes. It gives a lot of dimension to the canvas. Van Gogh often used this technique in his paintings. Sometimes he even used his fingers to spread the thick paint around! His painting “The Starry Night” is one of the most well known paintings in the world and is a great example of impasto painting with the thick swirls of paint.

Vincent Van Gogh - The Starry Night - June 1889

For this project with my kids, we used canvases, extra heavy acrylic gel, acrylic paints, and a stiff bristled brush.

Mixing the heavy acrylic gel into the acrylic paints gives them a nice thick texture. The stuff bristles on the brush make it easier to move the thick paint around your canvas. We painted a swirly night sky like Van Gogh using the brush and our fingers. I told the kids to pay attention to the direction of the brush strokes and how the colors of the moon and stars glow into the sky with strokes of yellow and white.

If you want to learn more about Van Gogh (and a lot of other artists), I recommend Vincent’s Starry Night and Other Stories by Michael Bird!

Recycled Sculpture Like Louise Nevelson's

Happy Earth Day! I decided to make use of some things in our recycling bin and put together this project for my kids. They had so much fun collaborating to build it.

I based this project on the work of Louise Nevelson. We read about her in Women in Art by Rachel Ignotofsky before we got started. My kids thought it was so cool that Louise would collect “junk” from the streets to create her famous sculptures.

For our sculpture, I gathered up empty boxes, leftover supplies from other craft projects, and black paint. I used a hot glue gun to glue their pieces together after they arranged them.

The kids arranged everything how they wanted, I glued it together, then they painted everything black.

Finished creation!

A little bit messy, but so simple and fun! They loved painting it and seeing how different it looked when it was all black. If you create one I’d love to see it! You can tag me on Instagram @ninabeldesigns!

Paul Cezanne - Still Life

Paul Cezanne painted lots of still lifes, especially fruit. (A still life is just an arrangement of everyday objects.) Before we started painting, I talked with my kids about perspective, Post-Impressionism, and Cezanne’s use of dark colors. You can look at his brush strokes in his paintings and his almost solid outlines of objects. Info sheet is available at the bottom!

Still Life Painting

Materials:

Objects for a Still Life

Canvas (or paper)

Pencil

Paint

Brushes

Water

Instructions:

1 - Set up your still life! You can choose everyday items from around your house. We used a bowl and fruit for ours. Some other ideas are flowers, toys, or blocks.

2 - Find the best spot to sit and paint your still life. Your perspective will change as you look at it from different angles. Once you find a view you like, sketch out the still life in pencil.

3 - Paint your still life. Cezanne liked to simplify objects into basic shapes. See what basic shapes you can find in your still life.

4 - You can use your imagination for the background. You don’t have to paint exactly what you see.

5 - Make sure to sign your name at the bottom! You can tag me on instagram @ninabeldesigns.

Beatrix Potter - Nature Paintings

Beatrix Potter is well known as the author of The Tale of Peter Rabbit which she illustrated herself with beautiful watercolors. A lot of people don’t know that she also painted scientific nature paintings. She created hundreds of detailed paintings of fungi. She even studied them under microscope!

Watercolor of fungi by Beatrix Potter

We talked about how Beatrix Potter mixed realism and fantasy in her illustrations and then we painted some Easter cards to mail to our family. Since we are all staying at home, now is a great time to send some mail out. It’s always fun to get an actual letter!

Here are a few pictures of the bunny and mushroom cards we made.

Then we studied nature and made our own nature paintings!

Watercolor Nature Study

Materials:

An item found in nature (mushroom, plant, flower, pinecone, shell etc)

Pencil

Paper or Sketchbook

Watercolors

Brush

Water

Magnifying Glass (if you have one)

Instructions:

1 - Find an interesting piece of nature in your yard or home and study it closely. Look for little details you might not notice if you didn’t pay close attention.

2 - Lightly sketch the object on paper. Try to get all the little details! You sketch the entire object and then sketch a magnified view of a section of it if you want.

3 - Paint your sketch with watercolors. If you water down the paint, you can paint nice and light so that you don’t cover up your lines. Watercolors bleed into each other when wet. If you don’t want colors to mix, let one dry before you paint another right next to it.

4 - When your painting dries, go over your lines with a fine tip pen. Make sure to add your name and the date so you remember when you drew it. You can write a description at the bottom if you want. If you enjoyed it, keep going and start a collection of nature paintings! I’d love to see pictures. Tag me on Instagram or Facebook.

Salvador Dali - Melting Clocks

This project was inspired by Salvador Dali’s painting The Persistence of Memory. While I worked on these with my kids, we talked about surrealism and imagination. The info sheet on Dali is at the bottom of the post.
This project was a little bit harder than the others I’ve posted and younger kids will probably need some help. My kids had a lot of fun making them though! The clocks look so cute melting all over our shelves.

Salvador Dali The Persistence of Memory

Melting Clocks

Materials:

Air Dry Clay

Rolling Pin

Brushes

Paint

Water

Sharpie

Aluminum Foil (or something else to shape your clock on)

Instructions:

1- Roll your clay into a ball with your hands, then roll it out with your rolling pin into an oval shape that’s about 1/2” thick.

2 - You might see little cracks start forming on the edges of the clay. You can dip your fingers into water and smooth them out.

3 - Ball up some foil or find something else to drape your clay on. Form it into a fun curvy shape, then leave it in a safe spot to dry. Ours took about a full day to dry.

4 - When it’s dry, paint the entire front white. You can use other colors to shade it for more dimension if you want. I blended in some blue and grey to areas of mine.

5 - Paint a frame around the outer edge. It can be any color!

6 - Next add your clock numbers! We divided our clocks up with little marks first to make it easier. (One at the top, bottom, left, and right to divide it into quarters. Then 2 more marks within each quarter.) I painted the numbers onto my clock but my kids found it easier to use a marker. The great thing about these is that they are meant to look wonky so the numbers don’t need to look perfect. I love the sideways 8 and upside down 7 on my 5 year old’s.

7 - Next put a dot in the very center of your clock and draw or paint on 2 clock hands. You can add a little shadow next to the hands if you want.

8 - You can also add extra details to it if you feel like it. My 11 year old added a bee to hers. Then all that’s left is to find a good spot for it! I’d love to see your finished clocks. Send a picture to me on Instagram or Facebook.

Romero Britto - Tissue Paper Project

Today’s project is based on the work of Romero Britto. (By the way, he has a free coloring book download here.)

We talked about how art can make people happy and how Britto uses his art to encourage people. The info sheet I made is available at the bottom of this post.

Romero Britto - Squeaki

Tissue Paper Project

Supplies:

Paper

Pencil

Sharpie

Tissue Paper (cut into small squares)

Water

Paintbrush

Markers

Instructions:

1 - With pencil, sketch out a design on your paper that makes you happy. We looked at Britto’s artwork for ideas.

2 - Go over your drawing with a black sharpie.

3 - Use a paintbrush to wet your paper with water and lay tissue paper squares all over.

4 - Let it dry. When dry, take off the tissue paper.

5 - Draw different patterns inside of each shape with markers. You can send me pictures on Instagram or Facebook!

I love how different each one turned out!

Kandinsky Cookies

I’m so happy that kids have enjoyed the Klimt project from my last post. I loved seeing photos of all of the beech forest paintings!

This next project is an edible art project based on Kandinsky’s Color Study: Squares with Concentric Circles. Kandinsky used gouache and crayon for his but we used cookie dough and food coloring for ours! (You could also do this same project with playdough.) We talked about the artist and use of color. I made an info sheet on Kandinsky that is available at the bottom of this post. You can find more info and see some paintings here.

Vasily Kandinsky - Color Study: Squares with Concentric Circles

Kandinsky Cookies

1 - Make sugar cookie dough. (I’ll post my recipe below but any recipe should work. Betty Crocker has a bagged sugar cookie mix that is easy and great!) Separate the dough into several bowls. Mix a different color food coloring into each bowl. Make whatever colors you want!

2 - Roll balls of dough. Start with a ball around 2” and make smaller and smaller balls of different colors to stack on top.

3 - Lightly squish the stack down with your hand or a rolling pin.

4 - Play around with the colors for each stack. See how different colors look next to each other.

5 - Bake the cookies according to the recipe instructions. (We had to leave ours in a few minutes longer since they were so thick.) Enjoy eating your artwork! I’d love to see pictures. You can message me on Instagram or Facebook!

Sugar Cookie Recipe

Ingredients:

1 c. unsalted butter, softened

1 1/4 c. sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

2 3/4 c. flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

Directions:

Cream together butter and sugar. Mix in egg and vanilla. Add flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix well. Roll dough into balls and place on a cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for 8-9 minutes.

Gustav Klimt - Beech Forest Project

Since we are all stuck at home for a while, I put together some little art history lessons and projects for my kids. I thought it would be fun to share them here for anyone interested.

For our first one we talked about Gustav Klimt and looked at some of his paintings. I made an info sheet on him that is available at the very bottom of this post. More information and photos of his paintings can be found here.

Our project was a yarn resist painting of a forest. Klimt painted a few landscapes of birch and beech forests while at Lake Attersee. I found the yarn painting idea on Pinterest. If anyone paints one I’d love to see! Message a photo to me on Instagram or Facebook. Here’s the tutorial!

Yarn Resist Beech Forest

Materials:

Canvas

Yarn

Brush

Paint

Colored Pencil

Instructions:

1 - Wrap yarn tightly around your canvas overlapping lots of strands for thicker trees and fewer for thinner trees. This will add dimension since trees closer to you look bigger and further trees look smaller. It looks more natural if the lines aren’t all perfectly straight! Tie the yarn ends together at the back and adjust the yarn lines to be how you’d like them.

2 - Start painting! You want to use the brush to dab the paint (not strokes!) so that you don’t move your yarn. Dab the paint right over the yarn. We used mainly golds and greens for the ground and blues for the sky. Use a variety of colors and make sure not to blend too much so that you can seen texture and colors for your forest floor.

3 - Once you fill up your canvas with color, let it dry. This is the fun part! Cut across all your yarns strands at the back and pull them off. Now you should have a forest of white trees!

4 - The last step is to add the detail. Use a dark colored pencil to add knots and lines to your trees. Now you have your own Beech Forest!