Shapely Animals

Shapely Animals - Day 1

Bear Paw Studio - Kid's Art Camp

Art Safari - Sept.  24 - 27, 2012

Africa is the focus for art camp this time, and we are going on an Art Safari, using music, pictures, books, and art projects to explore and have fun learning about art and Africa.  Art concepts for this trip will include using basic shapes to draw animals; increasing our knowledge of primary, secondary, complementary, and analogous colors; learning about traditional African clothing and textile patterns, and discovering the fun of making and trading ATC's (Artist Trading Cards).

We started by studying photos of African wildlife closely to discover the big shapes we could see in the animals (circles for heads, ovals for eyes, long rectangles for legs, etc.), and then used these shapes to make 8"x10" drawings of the animals.  We used tracing paper and markers to outline the basic shapes,  rubbed the back of the tracing paper with graphite, then traced over the lines to transfer the drawing on to our painting paper.  

After the design was on the paper, we used tempera paints to color the animals.

Cassidy paints a brilliant red lion.

Melody mixes orange and yellow for her leopard.

The next step was to cut our paintings out, after letting them dry.  Luckily tempera paints dry fast!

Hailey's giraffe is dry enough for cutting.

Emma is glad she doesn't have to cut out all those stripes.

Gretchen smiles with her beautiful toucan.

We used colored construction paper to make grass for our animals to stand, sit, or hide in, since we wanted to include a bit of their habitat.  Glueing the animals to a backing paper was next.  This project had a lot of steps, which kept everyone very busy for two hours.

Danielle's giraffe quietly waits for glue and backing paper.

Emma's purple glue matches her shirt.

Gretchen's toucan needs some green behind to show up on the black paper.

Using oil pastels, the artists added a hot African sun and a border around the edges to finish the project.  Everyone was proud of the masterpieces, and rightly so!  They were colorful and full of life--wildlife!

And the sun set on the Serengeti-studio after a long day on Art Safari!  This was a great start to our four day trip, and the six young artists did a fantastic job!  Check back soon for our next adventure.

Betsy Bear, Safari Guide