Monday, May 2, 2011

I've Painted Everything Art Project


We own the book Hugo and Miles in I've Painted Everything! by Scott Magoon, and I have wanted to do a project with this book for the longest time.  The book is about Hugo the elephant, a creative artist who runs out of things to paint.  He decides to go on a trip to Paris with his friend Miles.  While there, Hugo begins to see things in a different way and realizes that he can approach his art in different ways too.

After reading the book, I began by giving C and R the opportunity to see an object from different perspectives.  I handed over my camera (always a big hit!) and let them take pictures of Kelly (our Bernese Mountain Dog) while they were sitting on top of the kitchen table (crazy, right?), sitting under the table, and standing on the couch.  We looked at the pictures and talked about the different angles and how each picture is different even though Kelly never changed.

R took these pictures:



These are the pictures taken by C:



We had to do some painting too, of course.  C and R chose to do an art project based on the pages where Hugo realizes that he can change the size of his canvas to have two different types of paintings.  He creates a large painting and a very small painting.

For the large painting, I taped long sheets of paper onto the sliding glass doors in the kitchen for C and R to create their art.  I encouraged them to make long strokes with their paint brushes.



C and R used index cards to create small works of art.



We talked about why they used different types of brushes for the small art than they used for the large art, and even how they used their fingers, hands, and arms differently for the two types of art.  They had a lot of fun with this project.

The index card idea was inspired by the index card art done over at Adventures in Mommydom.

9 comments:

MaryAnne said...

I love the large painting small painting idea!

Your dog is beautiful!

Sherri said...

Those large paintings are awesome! Great idea! I love her face in the last picture...so adorable!

Ticia said...

I love all you did with this. And I still think index card art is SO much fun.

I need to get some more large pieces of paper again.

Anonymous said...

What fun! I love the pictures and the big and small works of art! I also love your dog :-)

An Almost Unschooling Mom said...

My kids would love to get their hands on my camera! I'm just not sure I'd ever see the camera again :)

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

Oh, how awesome. We just got Anna a simple camera that works on batteries and let her loose. About 30 min, camera memory was full and batteries were running low. I have to look for this book.

Debbie said...

I love how you approached this, including the pictures the kids took with your camera.

Jenny said...

I love Abby's perspective when she uses the camera, it's fun to see. Cool idea to use the small and big paper!

Valerie @ Inner Child Fun said...

What great photos & artwork! Love the idea of large painting -- what fun!