The kids spent two weeks on these butterflies, and they worked so hard on them. (I teach a 1/2 hour art class each week.) I think they turned out beautifully. The first week they started by painting a giant “3” on 1/2 of a folded paper, then folded and massaged the paper. They thought the massage part was pretty funny, but after they saw how the image transferred they really got interested in adding paint, massaging again, adding more paint… We talked briefly about symmetry and a warm color pallet. Then they cut out the bodies, gave them “life” by drawing on features and that was a world-wind of a class.
The second week the kids painted the backgrounds. First I had the kids raise their hands if their butterflies were mostly orange, and showed them how blue was the complement of orange and that painting a blue background would make the butterfly stand out – “the star of the show”. Then the kid who had a mostly red butterfly shyly raised her hand and I told the the kids that she might want to add some green to the background color to really make her butterfly stand out. Then they painted a 12×18 paper with their cool colors, cut out their butterflies and let the blue paint glue down the butterfly. In retrospect it would have been easier to have the kids cut first so that the backgrounds were still all wet enough to work as glue. As it was I spent a lot of time after class adding glue to most of the butterflies.
I love how all of the butterflies look together. I hope the kids are as proud of their work as I am of them.
