Tag Archives: watercolor

What We’re Making: Mondrian-Inspired Art

August 29, 2017What We're Makinggroup art project, group craft, group craft project, markers, Mondrian, tape, watercolor

Who doesn’t love them some Mondrian! I’ve always loved the bold, primary colors and structure of his pieces.

Recently we did a Mondrian-inspired art project with our groups. We used markers and crayons with one group, and watercolors with another. The project can be adapted to each group’s interests and needs.

Start with a large piece of white paper and some blue painters tape. Use the painters tape to mark off different size rectangles all over your paper. If you cut the ends with scissors it will help keep your lines nicely crisp when we start adding color.

Once you’re satisfied with your grid layout, starting coloring in the rectangles! Use yellow, red, and blue to stay true to the Mondrian roots of the activity.

Once you’ve colored as many rectangles as you’d like, take a black marker and trace along the edges of the painters tape. Then peel off the painters tape.

With black marker, fill in the spaces left by the removed tape. A ruler will help you keep the lines straight.

And you’re done! You can use primary-colored tape around the edges of your art to form a border if you like, or leave it as it is.

Check out some of the pieces our participants made!

The world needs more bright, bold art in it; I hope this has inspired you to make some!

What We’re Making: Leis and Surfer Shirts

September 15, 2016Creativity/Spirituality, What We're Makingleis, necklace, paint, paper craft, surfer shirts, watercolor

Maybe it’s almost fall, but here in Texas, it still feels like summer. And to me, summer means going to the beach! In August we made our own leis and surfer shirts with our groups to really get in the spirit of the season.

The leis were made from construction-paper flowers interspersed with sections of straw. Kaye prepped the flowers and straw pieces ahead of time, and also wrapped one end of the string in tape for easier stringing. Once on site she taped the strings to the table at each participants place, leaving enough room to knot the leis after the participants were done. She said this made tying the final necklace together much easier!

For the surfer shirts, Kaye cut shirt-front shapes from butcher paper. To decorate the shirts, we provided both watercolor markers for drawing, and sponge stampers and ink pads for flower-making.