Our Neighborhood – Children’s Auction Art project

The 2011 primary class’ Auction Art project is complete!

I cut trees and houses out of acid free colored paper (found in the scrapbooking aisle).  Each first year primary student colored their tree or trees using a choice of two green oil pastels.

Second and third year primary students picked out their house and used a variety of oil pastels to make architectural elements and sometimes landscaping.  I worked with one or two children at a time, first discussing with them what shapes they see on houses, and providing a couple examples.  Two trees and a school house were designed by the teacher and teacher’s aid.

The next step is to prepare the background.  I taped off a 2.5 inch border on my matt board and painted the inside with Liquitex gloss medium and varnish.  I found this to be a beneficial step to decrease bleeding under the tape while experimenting on extra matt board.  On my first project I only sealed the tape with the  Liquitex on the border, but found an inconsistency in the first coat of paint that required a thicker second coat.

I painted a dark blue sky, mixing a couple different colors.  Using butcher paper I sketched out the border of our mountain silhouette here in Reno.  I used this as a stencil to trace on to the blue painted matt board. Using black acrylic paint I pulled my brush slowly along the pencil line of the mountain and filled in the rest.  I attempted to use giant acid free paper for the background, cutting the paper with a quilter’s straight edge and roll cutter (similar to pizza cutter).  When I tried glueing the black mountains onto the blue background the paper became too wrinkled.  I even tried using felt, but found that the paint gave it the best look.