paint cut paste

sometimes i love the $1 bins at michael’s. i found a couple of these blank puzzles (various sizes) a while back and forgot they were in the art cabinet… but guess who spotted them this week.

we got out some markers, and N began to draw on the puzzle — immediately (and randomly) decisive that she was making a giraffe picture.

she rode out her morning pancake buzz on designing and coloring this for a while.

when it was finished, i sprayed it with final fixative because i knew the markers would come off all over our hands when playing with the puzzle.

then we broke it all to pieces – N loved this part! we all have innate tendencies for both creation and destruction… this satisfies both.

then we worked to put it back together, and she was impressed with how she could “make such a hard puzzle!”

the other day i decided to bust out the pastels on N… oil pastels and chalk pastels, both. just because they are called pastels, doesn’t mean they’re always pale and muted — these art materials make vibrant marks!

if you’re not familiar, oil pastels glide across a page much like a really slick, smooth crayon might. (kind of like N’s creamy crayons, which we love, but they’re more narrow. kind of the diameter of a crayon.) they smear and blend together really nicely, unlike crayons.

chalk pastels are like a higher quality chalkboard chalk… they have a finer dust particle that makes a total mess for really pretty smudges when blending. so we just spent the morning playing around with these new materials, which are usually reserved for mommy, so that made it exciting for the little one.

oil pastel image of a person & duck (labeled!)

N made a few cool pictures with each medium. with the chalk pastels, we practiced smudging and blending colors with our fingers. some kids (uh, and adults, including me) may not enjoy the dry, dusty feeling of the chalks, or may become frustrated by the way their picture changes, smears, and becomes littered with fingerprints while working. other kids (and adults) really delight in this sort of mutable material. chalk pastels are great to use for learning how to mix primary colors together to make secondary colors.

flower study in chalk pastels

i brought the chalk pastel piece outside (without her) to spray it with a fixative spray (see link at the bottom of this blog for product info.) if you make art with the chalks, it will continue to smear and smudge unless you use some sort of fixative on it, but be sure to spray it where there’s good ventilation and away from tiny lungs.