Woodcut Art

In art today, we took a look at the pictures in "Snowflake Bentley". Mary Azarian used woodcut printing to make the pictures in the book. We thought we'd try our hand at it today. Here's what we needed:

• sharpened pencil
• green styro foam floral block ~ we used 4" x 4"
• sheet of paper
• 8 1/2" x 11" card stock
• paint

1. cut card stock into four squares
   
2. the floral block was traced onto the sheet of paper
3. kids sketched their idea within the outline
4. with a sharp pencil they drew design onto block
5. then carefully scrap out styro foam from within the lines or areas you don't want covered with paint
6. paint the remaining flat surface of block
7. press the painted surface onto a piece of cardstock

Art and Shadowing

Today, for art in "All the Secrets of the World" we discussed shadowing, how a shadow is cast from it's light source. If the light source is above you (think bright, sunny day, at noon) you won't have much of a shadow; when the light source is in front of you, your shadow is behind you; when the light source is behind you, your shadow is in front of you. Here's our photo demonstration:

Here's the light source in front of Thing Two and his shadow
behind him.

Here's the light source behind Thing Two.
Yup, you guessed it, his shadow is in front of him.

Don't recall which photo it was during, but he got a bit confused, because there was enough light coming in that he told me the wrong direction of the shadow. I had to rephrase the question to something like "Which way is your shadow going as a result of the flashlight?" He got it then the correct answer.

Failed Art Attempt

Life does not always work out as one would hope. That was ALL to apparent yesterday. Thing one and I worked on making cardinal eggs for art. They turned out well (shape, not to many lines or finger prints, etc.). I set up the toaster oven to "cook" them like the directions said. About 10 minutes into the process, Thing Two was clearing his dishes to the kitchen, when I hear "Mom, there's smoke coming out of the toaster oven!!" Good day gone bad in an instant. The eggs and nest were on fire, there was gray smoke coming out of the oven, and it smelled gross. I got things turned off, unplugged, and began opening windows. Finally got some hot pads and walked the toaster oven out to the patio (made of concrete) and dowsed it with water from the house.

We're laking an art project and a toaster oven.

We gained an appreciation for fire safety, not leaving things unattended, a house that could have SO easily burned down, and that cleaning the burned plastic smell out of the cabinets is not such a big thing in life.

Before and after pictures to come (don't think the after eggs have been thrown out yet!).