Winter Art

Well, I've had a break from posting on this blog...but it hasn't really changed what we do, so thought I would share a few of the boys' latest beauties with you all :-)

Here are some tea light lanterns they decorated yesterday. I can't find link to tutorial but basically you mod-podge the jars, add strips of tissue paper and torn sheet music (this is "Winter Wonderland") plus bits of glitter in our case :-) They look beautiful with the little candles in:



The boys have also made some lovely paintings of winter trees:



(and yes, that is some more glitter!)

We have continued with the Sketch Tuesday and are all seeing real improvements in our sketching abilities. The boys have picked their favourites from recent assignments:

Gman likes his "something to cure a cold" sketch:



And Waif was especially proud of his "something you find in a toolbox":



Oh, and we've been doing more Van Gogh inspired art. Van Gogh is both boys' favourite artist at the moment.

Here's Gman's vase of flowers:



And Waif's:



This will probably be the last post of 2010...see you in 2011. Let's hope it's a good one!

Catch Up

Is it really that long since I posted?  Yikes.  Time flies when you're having fun.

So what have boys been up to?

We've visited several local art exhibitions, including my favourite, a textile art exhibition at Blickling Hall.  No photos of the exhibition but here's the boys enjoying the grounds:






We've done some more expressionist style paintings. These are expressing an "angry" feeling using unusual colour combos:





We've been on a visit to the Imperial War Museum at Duxford. The boys are lucky enough to have a grandfather who worked as an aircraft engineer at Duxford in the early sixties, so he was able to give them lots of insider knowledge on the planes.







Another highlight of the last few weeks has been the first session of Forest School (there are five more 2-hour sessions to go). Here the boys will be learning about such exciting things as using tools, making a campfire, identifying plants in the wood etc. The first session was promising, hopefully I will be able to post some pics in an ensuing entry.

Art, Rust and Picture Perfect Boyhoods

It's been a while since I've posted on here, but not because we haven't been busy...

We've done some more abstract art, using watercolours and marker pens:



This was with the help of the great book "Painting Abstracts:  Ideas, Projects and Techniques".  It's not a children's book by any means but a lot of the projects are accessible or adaptable for kids and the great thing is they aren't too prescriptive so allow the kids to go off at their own tangent.

We've done some more experiments relating to Gman's rock project.  The most recent of these goes against all my instincts and turns something that is perfectly edible (grapefruit) into something most inedible (a fake geode)!!  This project was taken from a fab little book we have out of the library and involves layering Plaster of Paris mix into the emptied grapefruit shell, then sprinkling in alum crystals and topping up each day with some alum mixture.  We put a little red and blue food colouring in the mix to make it purple and sparkly!  And yes, it is a messy process :-)



Waif particularly enjoyed doing some rust dyeing this week.  Again we took this project from a book aimed at adults: Fabric Art Workshop but which has a few projects that would be good to do with kids, as long as you take care and use rubber gloves etc.  To make this fabric, first of all we laid our unbleached cotton in a metal tray, then dampened it with a mixture of vinegar and water.  Next we ferreted around in the shed for some metal artefacts, some already rusty, some not eg washers, steel wool, weights, nails etc and arranged these on top of the fabric before spraying again with the vinegar and water mixture.  We placed the tray inside a black bin bag, tied it closed, weighed it down and left for 24+ hours.

This is what it looked like when we took it out of the bag:



Waif donned some rubber gloves and carefully removed the rusty things (we put them aside in an old ice cream tub for "next time") then we soaked the cloth in a mixture of salt and hot water to set the dye.  The cloth is beautiful, partly because you can see in it what you like eg a treasure map, a wolf, the moon, monsters, an explosion in space...what can you see?



As well as the art and rocks, we have also been enjoying some old fashioned stories together.  Following a recommendation on Julie's Homeschooling-ideas blog, we got hold of the book "A Picture Perfect Childhood".  I found this a really inspiring book, convincing me that reading picture books to the boys (including 10 year old Gman) would be beneficial for all of us.  We've been slotting in a story after lunch each day, starting with the beautiful picture book, "The Barefoot Book of Earth Tales" and both the boys and myself have been really enjoying it.  It's a lovely, quiet, cuddly time together and the stories themselves are raising plenty of issues to talk about.  Hopefully it will help balance out some of the over-boisterous boyish behavior that has been landing them in trouble this week, and help them get in touch with a gentler side...

Edible Science Experiments are the Best

Gman has started on his latest project - Rocks and Minerals.  This has given us a great opportunity to make some toffee and honeycomb...oops, I mean igneous rocks :-).  Here's how to do it:



First, put a greased baking tray in the freezer for an hour or two.

Place about 500g sugar and a few splashes of water into a saucepan.  Heat until melted and golden brown.  You need to stir fairly constantly to make sure it doesn't burn and stick to the bottom of the pan.

Use oven gloves to take the baking tray out of the freezer.

To make a glass like substance, simply tip the mixture straight onto your baking tray.  It will set almost instantly, but certainly be ready to hack away and eat (er, study) after 10 minutes.

If you want to make a pumice like rock, then add a teaspoon or so of bicarbonate of soda to your mixture before you pour it onto the tray.

The honeycomb (oops, I mean pumice) is particularly good with ice cream ;-P.



As well as the rocks project, the boys have also been enjoying recreating more artistic masterpieces, including this Pollack-inspired masterpiece:





Waif got up one morning deciding that today he would "do" Van Gogh, and produced several small pictures, carefully copied from a little book of Van Gogh pictures that we picked up at the Fitzwilliam Museum.  We put them all together and made a display poster:



Aren't they fab?

Those that saw this earlier post will know that we like to home educate as thriftily as possible, so we were quite excited to find that a local primary school which was closing and moving premises was holding a book sale.  For £2 we got a stack of educational books, including a massive poetry book just in time for next week's poetry themed home ed group.  Yay!

Art in the Garden

Yesterday I took the boys to a marvellous art exhibition called "Art in the Garden" which was held in a beautiful garden in the nearby village of Fincham.  Here's a selection of some of the installations/sculptures:



Of particular relevance to us (as a family opposing local plans to build a waste incinerator) was this installation:



Everything is made of plastic that cannot currently be recycled in Norfolk ie will sit for hundreds of years in landfill.  A beautiful, colourful piece of art but a sobering lesson.  Here's the text that the artist had posted alongside it, hopefully it will be readable:



After looking around the garden, the boys also used pencils provided to make their own pictures, which will be laminated and displayed in the artist's studio.  Here's Gman with his "volcanic ash cloud" picture:



Last week we had a few days break at Center Parcs.  One of the advantages of being a home educating family is being able to visit attractions during the less busy term time :-).  The boys loved being able to ride their bikes all around without any traffic, as well as playing in the wilder parts of the woods.  They also swam, played crazy golf, went bowling and had a go at painting some pottery:



All in all, a lovely week!

We have also had yet another visit to Dersingham Bog Nature Reserve - still our favourite place for a walk - and the boys practiced their balancing skills and cheesy grins:

Painting and Sewing and Stuff

We have been continuing with our Impressionism' theme and Gman has nearly finished putting his first lapbook together on the subject (pictures will follow!).  In the meantime we have visited the excellent Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge to check out their Impressionist collection (and were also wowed by the Ancient Egyptian stuff there) and painted some more in the style of famous painters.

Firstly, the boys did these paintings, inspired by Van Gogh's "Starry Night":

[caption id="attachment_231" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Gman's painting inspired by Van Gogh's "Starry Night""][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_232" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Waif's interpretation of Van Gogh's "Starry Night""][/caption]

Then, we had a go at using some unexpected colours for everyday landscapes, in the style of Paul Gauguin.  Waif chose to paint orange grass, purple trees, a green and blue sun and a red sky.  He loved choosing different wacky colours for his:

[caption id="attachment_233" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Waif's wacky colours"][/caption]

Gman was a bit more hesitant about the whole colour thing and initially referred to a colour wheel so he could select the "right" wrong colour (!) but he soon got into it.  He chose to paint from a sketch he had made on the train to Cambridge of things he could see out of the window.  He has blue and yellow grass, orange gravestones, purple barns and a green sky with blue clouds, with a purple window frame round the outside:

[caption id="attachment_234" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Gman's crazy colours"][/caption]

Gman has also been turning his hand to sewing some napkins this week.  He has made two reversible napkins using the sewing machine and is very proud of them.  He has even put pictures on his own blog:  here and here.

[caption id="attachment_235" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Gman shows off his new napkin"][/caption]