Polar Bears-Brrrrrrrr

Lately I have been into mixed media projects.  Not only do I find them interesting because there are so many elements, but I think the students thoroughly enjoy them as well because it keeps them looking forward to the next step!

This lesson incorporated liquid color washes (which basically is watered down acrylic paint), rice paper and glue.

We started off the lesson by drawing our icebergs.  We created 2 curved lines and then painted the sky line above the iceberg lines.  Next we painted the sky with yellow and pink color washes.  They were asked to somewhat blend the colors together to make it look more realistic.  It was explained to them that the sky is full of swirls and different gradients of color.  The sky is just not a band of blue, a band of white, and so on.

After the sky was painted, we started tearing up small pieces of rice paper and glued them down under our first 2 pencil lines that we drew.  This created the texture for the iceberg.  Once the paper was all glued down, they went over it with a blue colorwash. 

The final step was placing our polar bears on the iceberg. I decided to create templates of these polar bears rather than for them to draw them because the project is long and I didnt want the polar bears to turn out like big white blobs.  I also have alot of younger kids in my classes, so I didnt want to frustrate them. 

Anyway, this is a tiny portion of the work.  The classes were so busy and we were just so crazy that I didnt have time to take many pics!