Art Classes in Virginia

In this picture, your child explored:

• Drawing animals

• Foreground, middle ground, and background

• Using chalk pastels to create shadow and texture

THE DRAWING:

Fun Facts About Tigers:

• A group of tigers is called a “streak,” although they are usually solitary animals. (Individual tigers will claim territory of up to 100 square miles.)

• Female tigers are “grown up” at age 3; males are “grown up” at age 4.

• Tigers like water, are good swimmers, and will often cool off in rivers.

• Most tigers have more than 100 stripes, and no two tigers have the same stripe pattern!

• Tigers are diurnal, which means their peak activity occurs at dawn and dusk.

• Tigers eat around 6 kilos of meat a day, but can go as long as a week without food.

• Tiger saliva is antiseptic, and they use it to clean their wounds.

• If you were to shave off a tiger’s fur, it would still be striped!

• The heaviest recorded tiger was a Siberian tiger weighing 1,025 pounds.

• Tiger cubs are blind at birth, and can gain 100 grams in weight per day.

• All tigers have a similar marking on their foreheads, which resembles the Chinese symbol Wang, meaning “King.”

• Tigers move both legs on one side of the body simultaneously when they walk.

• A tiger’s night vision is six times greater than a human’s.

• A captive tiger can live up to twenty years; a wild tiger usually lives between ten and fifteen years.

In this week’s picture the actual drawing of the tiger is fairly simple. The tricky part comes in drawing the tiger’s habitat. The drawing has a foreground (anything in front of the tiger), a middle ground (where the tiger is standing), and a background (the landscape and sky behind the tiger). We used “bump and jump” to add grasses in front of the tiger. Two fun opportunities for creativity in this picture are in the tiger’s stripe pattern and in the landscape around the tiger.

Line Drawing of Tiger

Abstract Tiger by Franz Marc

THE MEDIUM:

Using Prismacolor NuPastels & Mixing Mediums

Prismacolor NuPastels

At KidzArt we use

Prismacolor NuPastel color sticks. This form of chalk has a slightly varnished surface, which keeps it harder and cleaner than other varieties. They come in thin sticks which can be easily broken to be more manageable for small hands. 

We show the kids how to use their fingers or a tissue to blend the chalk pastels; q-tips blend well in smaller areas. Because of the medium’s texture, the pictures can smear easily; you may want to spray the finished artwork with hairspray to help the chalk adhere to the page.

Mixing mediums (the materials used to create a picture) is a fun technique to create contrast in a picture. In this picture, we used chalk pastels to create texture in the tigers’ fur and in several of the background elements and highlighted other portions using markers. Using black Prismacolor Markers or sharpies for the tigers’ stripes highlights their vivid boldness and makes the stripes really dominate the pictures.

Some mediums are easier to mix than others. Because chalk pastels can be a messy medium, it is best to use the markers first, then work around them with the chalk, to avoid ruining the markers. Encourage your child to try more multimedia projects at home.

Ask Your Child …

• To point out the foreground, middle ground, and background of the picture.

• To explain the use of “bump and jump.”

• To explain any unique items in his landscape.

• To show how she used chalk pastels to add shadow and texture.

• Talk about how each tiger’s stripes are unique, and discuss the stripe pattern your child used.

This week’s picture is a “snuggly” PORCUPINE, using CHALK PASTELS as the medium.

In this picture, your child explored:

• Using highlights and shadow to show depth
• Using chalk pastels
• How to layer color
• The concepts of foreground and background

 Porcupine Fun Facts:

 The porcupine is a rodent whose name is derived from the Latin for “quill pig;” their scientific name means “irritating back.”

• There are 22 species of porcupines; the American Porcupine is the most common.
• Porcupines are herbivores.
• Porcupines usually only have one baby, called a “porcupette.”
• Porcupines are best known for their quills; a single porcupine can have more than 30,000 quills – over 100 per square inch!
• When a porcupine is born, its quills are soft. (They harden within an hour.)
• Porcupine’s quills are hollow, making them buoyant in water, which helps them swim.
• Porcupines love salt, and will gnaw on wooden handles of tools to taste the salt from human perspiration.
• Porcupines are nocturnal, solitary creatures, who sleep during the day and usually live and travel alone.
• Porcupines are great climbers, and have been spotted as high as 60 feet in the air. 

Adult Porcupine

THE MEDIUM:

Using Chalk Pastels:

At KidzArt we use Prismacolor NuPastel color sticks. This form of chalk has a slightly varnished surface, which keeps it harder and cleaner than other varieties. They come in thin sticks which can be easily broken to be more manageable for small hands.

Prismacolor NuPastels

In this picture we taught your children how to layer colors to create a richer picture that adds depth and dimension to the porcupine and to the foreground. Layering lighter colors on top of darker colors, make the lighter areas look closer.

To blend the chalk pastels, we show the children how to use their fingers, or a tissue, and how to use a q-tip to get into finer areas. Because of the texture of the medium, the pictures can be easily smeared. We suggest spraying the finished artwork with hairspray to help the chalk adhere to the page.

Ask Your Child …

• To identify the foreground and the background in the picture.
• To explain where they used color blending in their picture. See if they can notice a difference between lighter and darker areas.