Thursday, October 15, 2009

Ghouls on a stick!!

Ghoul-on-a-stick

Halloween is just around the corner, one of my favorite holidays. The rowdies and I have a lot of fun with Halloween projects. One of our favorites is monsters, ghouls and skeletons on a stick. This is similar to the project I posted on January 24th, 2009, the paintbrush characters. We used paperclay as we did for that project but this time we molded it around a styrofoam ball, you can use really small round styrofoam or the really large ones. You can put all kinds of bumps and bulges on it to make it a scary monster.


We put a screw in this ghoul's head (he's got a screw loose!!)

After the clay dries paint them with acrylic paints and apply a sealer of some kind. The stick can be anything from a skewer to a popscicle stick, we also painted our stick. The sticks we used for ghouls-on-a-stick are lollipop sticks, my favorites..they make the ghouls look like lollipops!!

Have fun!!

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Art Tip

Lauryn's art.

I keep a whole section of art materials just for the rowdies to use when they come to visit. Kids do love to paint and draw, but almost all of my grandkids have experienced "artist's block."

They are all set to paint and they ask me what they should paint. I suggest things like bunny rabbits, kitty cats or merry-go-rounds. Their reaction is "I can't paint that", or "I don't know how...you do it for me."

To encourage them to explore with their art I tell them I would like to see how they paint a bunny rabbit, maybe by watching them I can learn something about bunny rabbit painting...things I would never have done...like pink and purple polka dots and squiggles for a tail.

So, instead of me sitting down drawing a bunny and them copying me we sit down and let the grandchild draw and I do my best fo copy theirs. It is a good experience for both of us. Funny thing...I almost always like their bunny best!!!