Performing and Visual Arts Camp 2013. Done!

Another year of camp complete! It was a great week, very busy, but very fulfilling too!

 

I think we had about 50 campers plus maybe 10 high school volunteers. This year we added a Photography Camp to the Performing and Visual Arts portion and I think that went rather well. The yearbook teacher taught that portion, the theatre teacher taught the performing arts portion and I taught the visual arts portion. We made a great team and I think all of the campers left happy.

 



 

I didn't take very many pictures of camp in progress this year... the photography kids did. But now I don't have them to blog about. I'll have to get some in action shots!

 

Here is one camper and her completed sculpture. I have to say, I love the sculpture project. I might even use it in my art 1 class!

 

Below are some pictures of the 20 minute musical the kids performed. It was called Spaced Out and they did an awesome job. We love these musicals and will use this company for next years production. It is published by Hal Leonard.

The campers made their costumes/props, "painted" murals, screen printed their tshirts and learned lines, songs and choreography!

 

 

Don't you love the changing murals! We used periaktoi (tall triangles that turn) and covered them with black craft paper. Then I sketched the scene on the paper and the kids using oil pastels "painted" the murals. It worked fabulously! I can't believe theatre people haven't started using this in shows! It's cheap, easy and no clean up! We are going to be doing this for theatrical productions starting in the fall! I had one classroom set of the crayola oil pastels and figured we would use them as long as they lasted. Umm. We didn't even make a dent in my supply! I am really pumped about this find!

With this year's camp complete, summer really begins for me! And we are already thinking of next years camp!

Girl Scout Mural

Lexi's Girl Scout troop has been working on their painting badge. This meant, I was involved. One of the options for the culminating project was to paint a mural.

So.. why not?

Here is what they did.  Isn't it so cute :)

 Really, it wasn't hard to do this. But is seems daunting to a lot of people, so here is a tutorial.

1. Take a picture of the group.

2. Using photoshop or another photo-editing software take out the background, and compress the photo into one layer.Then add the layers that you want to include. Notice that I have a number of typos in it.. I did fix the file prior to using it, but I guess I didn't save the corrected one.

3. Make a transparency. This might have been the hardest step as NOBODY makes transparencies anymore and I don't have the right kind of printer to do it at home.

4. Now, find one of those old fashioned overhead projectors and get a large piece of paper. I used a special heavy duty art paper called RendR from Crescent. It's a no show heavy paper on a roll. It's expensive, but worth it for a long-term project.

5. Trace the image.  Have your child proof your work. Thankfully Lexi noticed that the I had the troop number wrong! (That's why you use pencil!!)

6. Take it to the kids and have them paint themselves. Use solid colors. Can you imagine how chaotic the mural would be if I had let them try to give themselves faces and details. I had the girls use a special solid poster paint that doesn't make a mess!! It's called Playcolor. It's paint that dries in about 10 seconds... unless you use it really, really heavy.. then it takes 30 seconds.  I love how each girl is represented in a different color and that the colors blended when overlapped. We talked about how this was like making new friends :) !

I was sorry that two of the girls weren't there for the painting portion, but that's the way it works when you are dealing with kids. I decided that it was better to just get the mural finished without them.

After the meeting, I finished up the mural by adding a layer of black paint to the green text and outlining the girls and the logo.

Now all I have to do is go hang it in the hut!!

Oversized Coloring Sheets

Art Camp starts tomorrow.  One of the things the kids will get to learn about and do is create a mural. How do you do this with 40+ kids from 6 years old to 14?  Well, you teach it like a giant coloring page!

To do this, I decided on what I wanted for each of the 4 murals.  We are doing one per show/group.  Then I drew the design onto a full sized flat sheet. Then, with this one, since it's about Babe, the blue ox, I outlined Babe in blue, the farmhouse in red and and the windmill inn silver. 

Unlike a traditional mural for the stage, ours will have some white space, there is no way we could paint the entire thing in just a couple of rotations.  I'm looking forward to teaching the kids about stage painting and how to paint on a large scale!

Four full size sheets, going across the backstage are going to look great!! And for those of you out there who are leery of doing something like this with kids, instead of using paint, you could use markers...just make sure you put something underneath the sheet!