Trees

One of our on going art projects has been looking at trees.  We spent a lot of time in the Fall looking at leaves, the changing colors, and identifying what type of tree the leaves were coming from.  Now that it is Winter, the children have been looking out the art room at all our winter trees.  The way the bare branches look without their leaves, the color of the sky through the branches, and the direction of the branches.  Here is a little gallery of the different types of trees that the children have painted.

Below is a bunch of pictures the children picked from to observe and try and paint a tree similar to.

           

Young artists at work.

The Kindergartners enjoyed drawing their pictures with permanent marker and then painting in the background. 

 

                           "An Apple Tree"                                                "A Tree at Sunset"

After one of their India Ink Paintings were dry, we went and revisited the painting to add some color to the sky.

We also used plastic wrap to place on top of the paintings while they were wet to create a textured sky.  They look like wispy clouds. 

Some of the children made their own ink for the next set of tree paintings.  Using our Sumi'e painting kits the children made their own ink buy rubbing their ink sticks on a grinding stone with a little water.  They then went ahead and made their simple Sumi-e  style tree paintings.

For young 3-5 years olds, I think these tree paintings are beautiful and capture their way of seeing trees.  Can't wait to see what will happen when we observe the buds on trees, or some of the flowering trees on the property.