Pastel Cactus Drawing

One of my favorite combos is blending chalk pastels over dried glue. I’m always on the lookout for new subject matter, so when I saw this cactus illustration, I knew it would make a great image, and allow for some simple shading practice.
1. I used 9" x 12" black paper, but recommend something larger for 1st or 2nd grade students. I had to really be careful to keep my glue lines from touching each other, so a larger format would make it a lot easier.
2. My diagram shows the steps I took to make my drawing. When complete, I traced all the lines with white glue. It seems that the Rite Aid White glue dries clearer than others, which I prefer.
3. When the glue was dry, I used chalk pastel pencils to fill in the cactus. I decided that the light source was from the left, so I used a light green on all three left sides of the cactus, and a dark green on the right. I also had a medium green to fill in the middle, but you could just used two colors that meet in the middle.
4. After the cactus was colored, I filled in the sky, ground and rocks with single shades. To finish, a little white pencil made highlights on the cactus, and a little black made a ground shadow for it and some rocks. Spray with a sealer or hairspray when complete.

CA Visual Arts Standard: Grade Four
2.1 Use shading (value) to transform a two-dimensional shape into what appears to be a three-dimensional form (e.g., circle to sphere).

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Mache Pumpkin from Plastic Bags

This pumpkin is made from about 40 plastic grocery bags, some Saran wrap, 3 rubber bands, newspaper, paper towel and mache, topped off with a beautiful new orange glitter paint I found at Jo-Ann Fabrics. I'm so excited to have found this beautiful way to recycle plastic grocery bags.

Plastic Bag Pumpkin Tutorial
1. Collect about 40 plastic bags and loosely stuff them inside each other, one at a time. Compress lightly and tie bag shut with a slipknot at the top.


2. To smooth the surface, wrap the outside of the bag with a few long pieces of Saran Wrap. Overlap as necessary to keep edges lying flat. Take a rubberband (I used a 3" dia.) and slip around the center of the ball. Repeat with 2 more rubberbands, adjusting them evenly.



Adjust your rubberbands on top to be as close to the “stem” as possible, and the bottom to make a nicely centered crisscross as shown above.

3. Cover the pumpkin with one layer of paper mache. Be sure to run your finders through the creases often so that they stay prominent and don’t get smoothed over. For my favorite mache recipe, click here. Let dry overnight. Repeat with another layer of newspaper and let dry.

4. This step really helps to smooth out the bumps and gives you a nice white background to paint on. Cover the pumpkin with one layer of mache and paper towels.

5. I painted my pumpkin with two shades of Americana® orange acrylic paint. First a darker Cadmium Orange, then highlights of Jack-O-Lantern Orange, and finally Holly Green for the stem. After the paint dried, I added a layer of “Craft Twinkles Orange” from DecoArt®. It’s a kind of gel-looking paint that not only adds glitter, but a nice shine as well.

I’m going to experiment next with making more of these in different sizes. I think for elementary age students though, this size or larger would be best. This pumpkin measures about 8" in diameter.

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Hundertwasser Portraits

I’m still so hooked on the Vienna artist Hundertwasser, that I thought I would try combining his style with my popsicle portrait project. I think his art has a kind of layered marker look to it so it seemed like a good match.

1. It seems that Hundertwasser had a real aversion to straight lines, so I thought I would start with 8 un-straight jumbo popsicle stick glued to two back ones and let dry.
2. I traced the board onto dry wax paper just so I knew the size my drawing should be. Looking at Hundertwasser’s paintings, I tried his style of a very round head, large eyes that spread across the whole face, simple features and hair.
3. When the pencil drawing was done, I traced the lines with a gray marker, and then colored in all the shapes with Sharpie markers. In the past I have always tried to not smudge the color together, but this time I let them smear all they wanted to! When the coloring was done, I cut the drawing out very close to the edges.
4. I mixed 50/50 glue and water and brushed a layer all over the board and the back side of the drawing. I placed the drawing on the board and brushed another layer of glue over the front. Any wrinkles were spread out to smooth before the glue dried.
5. After the glue was dry, I went back with the markers and added those trademark Hundertwasser lines wherever it seemed fit. The marker colors show up much brighter over the dry glue so they give some added punch to the picture.

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