Under my Umbrella, Acrylic Paintings

We had so much fun creating our Under My Umbrella Acrylic Paintings in the Elementary Art class.

The book, The Big Umbrella by Amy June Bates, inspired this Acrylic Paint project. It's a story about helping others and being inclusive. 

We started by drawing our design with a pencil on paper. Then, we talked about Proportion, the principle of design that examines the size relationship between objects. Next, we looked at some examples of normal and exaggerated Proportions. In this lesson, the umbrella was an exaggerated proportion, and the bodies of the people under the umbrella were more typical proportions.

After we drew our designs, we carefully transferred them to our painting canvas using graphite tracing paper. This is a great way to get the design onto the canvas without creating too much of a mess on the canvas.

The Medium this month is Acrylic paint - we talked about what acrylic paint is made of and had fun looking up some of the minerals found in different paint colors.

The painting process for this project was pretty involved and lasted several lessons. First, we started with the backgrounds, painting our sky blue and the ground different colors depending on whether it was grass, a trail, or concrete. Next, we learned about complimentary colors and did some basic color mixing.

The following week we painted our umbrellas, then put the base layer down for our people and animals. 

Finally, in our last class, we added the details to our people using paint pens (much easier to control for the fine details).

We added rain by stamp making with pieces of cardboard that we dipped into white acrylic paint. We applied the stamp in the same direction several times to create repetition. 

Honestly, we had a lot of fun as well. Thanks for sharing your students with me. 

REGISTER FOR CLASSES HERE