About

Creativity and Inspiration

May you find ideas here to help you in creating artworks that inspire you to think deeper, appreciate your surroundings, and make you feel happy. The lessons here will be based on using materials from home to paint, collage, make sculpture, and instillation art from found objects. We will be inspired by nature, time, people, science, other artists, and innovating something new. These lessons can be created alone or with family. The site is designed so that there isn’t any order to the lessons you want to make. It’s more important that you find the idea fun and have the materials you will need to create the project. If you find a substitute for the materials listed, that’s awesome! Happy Art Lab Making! Xoxo
contact: CaraGoldstein1@gmail.com

Lesson One: Coffee Monster Drip Painting Characters inspired by Stefan Kuhnigk

Materials: black tea, coffee, turmeric, berries, beets, grapes, and any food you think will stain.

Directions: using tea, coffee, turmeric, and any spices you have, you can drip the color onto a piece of a paper and splatter it using a spoon, a dropper, a straw, or drip from a cup. My examples include hibiscus tea, turmeric, rose hips, lemon grass, orange peels, coffee, and black tea. Once the splatters have dried, try and find faces in the shapes and draw them in with pen or pencil. The link below is the inspiration for this project.

https://www.boredpanda.com/i-draw-coffee-monsters-from-random-coffee-stains/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic&fbclid=IwAR0dpu-d4wn00riTazavbFY0Sg9iIVxcPDQsjLYzdy6tsc9FxiU8cswcPs4

Lesson Two: Animal Sculptures

Materials: toilet paper rolls, scissors, markers, pens, paint, colored paper,tape, glue. The materials are flexible. Please use what you have at home.

Directions: gather all the materials you have to help make some cute animal sculptures. Sketch the animal you would like to draw on a piece of paper. Think about and plan the shapes and how you might attach one piece to another by taping, gluing, or cutting. You can decorate the cardboard with colored paper, washi tape, marker, acrylic or tempera paint or glue felt to it.

This lesson idea and images above are from this blog. http://supermakeit.com/blog?category=kids%20crafts

Lesson Three: Found Object Faces

Materials: plate, recycled items, toys, utensils, food, yarn, and anything you can think of.

Directions: Using a plate or another large shape surface as a base, place the base somewhere ideal to build on. Arrange materials into self portraits, portraits of family or celebrities, or just make a silly creature. The creature doesn’t have to be human at all.

Pictures thanks to the Yovino Folk Family

Lesson Four: Adam Hillman Arranged Pattern Sculpture

Materials: Colored pencils, q tips, markers, crayons, pennies, toys, utensils, or anything you have multiples of.

Directions: Create a pattern of repeating shapes using found materials. Place them on a clear, flat surface and consider the color of the background you place them on. Play around with different ways you can combine the materials into a visually pleasing sculpture to photograph. Try out 3 different styles of doing this assignment and photograph each one.

Bottom image thanks to Leanne Maxwell and Family

https://mymodernmet.com/things-organized-neatly-adam-hillman/?fbclid=IwAR2fhQhPfQQI4FIZJx4IkCWbP2agneHq3gMGCin6crrlXzePRFswlBpbkpA

Lesson Five: Laundry Art inspired by Amanda Mast

Materials: t-shirts, socks, pillowcases, pants, shorts, ties etc.

Directions: create a famous painting, cartoon character, spacecraft, or anything you can imagine and then photograph it. Arrange your clothing by color order and see what you have. Socks are really great to turn into different shapes like a ball or a rectangle. You could also fold them into triangles. See what you can do with layering the clothes. A pillowcase makes a great background color and t-shirts are very light and easy to scrunch for texture or fold.

Lesson Six: Window Art for Sun & Rain

Materials: paper, marker, glue, tape, colored pencil, paint (for sun)

Directions for sun: sketch out an idea for an animal or magical creature you want to display in a window in your house. The example below is designed to take up two floors of windows which is pretty inspiring. Think about if you want to add a message of hope to your neighbors. I have been drawing in my kitchen window when it rains and playing tik tac toe for fun. Anyways, so draw out your design on a regular piece of paper and decide how big you want it to be and what colors. You can also use colored paper if you have it and if you don’t you can use marker, colored pencil or paint. When you are done detailing your design, you can tape it to the window and take a picture or have a parent take one. Have fun!

For a rainy day: go to a window in the kitchen area of your house and draw on it when there is some cooking going on or when you see there’s a little steam happening and take a picture of your work :)

Lesson Seven: Andy Goldsworthy Nature Art

Materials: flowers, rocks, sticks, leaves

Directions: With permission from your family, head outside to a safe space where you can collect rocks, sticks, leaves, and flowers that have already fallen. Arrange your objects into a pleasing design and take a picture of your creation. Photo credit Olivia Chen of Liv and Chiu Art Studio

https://m.youtube.com/watch?fbclid=IwAR0s94PLLt-HQtrSOsvPakfQoNah57ItZ9oJM59hUMTSoypxV2rtOH_ik9I&feature=youtu.be&v=n5oEbhb06QY

Lesson Eight: Shadow Art

Materials: A camera, people to strike a pose, toys, stuffies, white paper

Directions: set up the materials above inside or outside and see if you can make shadows. Once you have a shadow you like, take a picture. Try to work with toys and people and maybe your pets if they can stand still. For your toys, you can trace the shadow onto white paper. It’s fun once you have the shadow traced to color it in or to decorate it somehow. Have fun!

Photos thanks to the Santos Delaney Family

Lesson Nine: Chalk Art

Materials: Removable tape, chalk

Directions: Tape out a fun design with lots of geometric shapes. Geometric shapes have corners. Triangles work really well for this project. You can create your design on a fence, on the side walk, or any surface outside where it can be washed off. Make sure you get permission to go outside.

Photos thanks to the Santos Delaney Family

Lesson Ten: Interactive Drawing inspired by Javier Perez and Edgar Artis

Materials: paper, pen, pencil, ink, or colored pencil

Directions: Look for materials around the house you would like to create a drawing to interact with. Pick 3 materials and draw around them and photograph. Below is a link to two artists who work in this way. Edgar Artis makes only dresses out of the objects and the artist above makes all sorts of things. Have fun!

https://mymodernmet.com/javier-perez-instagram-experiments/

https://mymodernmet.com/3d-fashion-illustrations-evening-dresses-edgar-artis/

Lesson Eleven: Mondrian Ziplock Bag Stained Glass

https://youtu.be/iSCmWnIoRpI

https://www.sfmoma.org/watch/country-dog-gentlemen-piet-mondrian/?fbclid=IwAR1zq1p6tpsE_MIoIMjxYU5MUAe0d8TE6BbYxDvcVlb41eTdL3-ri2hzwBU

Materials: gather ziplock bags, clear plastic and sharpie markers or tissue paper. You can also use black tape or black paper glued to a ziplock or plastic bag to make the squares and try regular marker to color if you don’t have sharpie.

Directions: with the black sharpie, tape, or paper make a grid onto the plastic or ziplock surface. You can tape many of these pieces together by cutting the ziplock open and taping it to multiple ziplocks. We will be making a stained glass window out of this to tape into an actual window. Once you are done making your square grid, color with sharpie, or glue colored paper into the squares, and finally tape and hang in the window like the bottom right picture with the couch.

Lesson Twelve: Paper Shadow Puppets Inspired by Lotte Reiniger who was one of the first silhouette Animators

Materials: black paper or white paper or card board colored or painted black, and something that can be a handle like a wooden dowel, pencil, spoon etc., scissors, tape or glue

Directions: Look at the shadow puppet examples and draw a fun shape onto the black paper with pencil or white colored pencil and cut the shape out, tape it to the stick, and look for a flashlight to see how the puppet looks on the walls after the sun sets.

https://theshopfloorproject.com/blogs/radar/shadow-play-the-work-of-lotte-reiniger

Lesson 13: Shadow Tube Stories

Materials: Toilet paper roll, clear plastic wrap, ziplock, or packing tape, sharpie, sticky foam, cardboard or construction paper, flashlight.

Directions: Put a layer of plastic or packing tape over the end of the toilet paper roll, cut out a silhouette shape out of paper, cardboard, or sticky foam to place and attach on the plastic with clear tape , detail the shape with any extra designs or backwards letters with black sharpie. Find a dark area of the house, and shine the flashlight through the open end of the tube and onto the wall. Take a picture of the shadow. This tube example is for all my students. I miss you and hope you are feeling inspired to create some cool artworks!