American Regionalism

In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, many Americans had a difficult time making enough money live. A lot of people lost money when the stock market crashed and many people were fired from their jobs. At this time, people were not very hopeful about the future.

The Regionalist art movement came about at the end of the 1920s. Instead of painting the world as dark, dirty, and hopeless, Regionalists painted hopeful scenes of the American Midwest. The paintings often showed hard working people who were making it through the depression. They gave people hope that the future would be better.

In Europe, abstract art was becoming popular at this time. Regionalists painted more realistic paintings instead. However, Regionalists cared more that the objects in their paintings were easy to recognize than that their paintings looked exactly like what could be seen in real life.

Regionalism fell out of popularity in the mid-1940s.

In the next few days, I’ll post about some of the better known Regionalists, beginning tomorrow with Grant Wood.

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My Current NaNoWriMo Word Count:

20048 / 50000 words. 40% done!
It was a slow day, but a little
progress is better than no progress.

Create Your Own Shimmer Painting

This project is a lot of fun and the result is an eye-catching, shimmery masterpiece. You actually don’t need any paint to create this “painting.”

Supplies Needed:

Aluminum Foil
Water
Cup
White Glue
Paintbrush
Tissue Paper
Glitter
Sequins
Cover your workspace. Ask an adult to cut a piece of aluminum foil for you. Pour a little water into your cup and add about the same amount of glue. Mix the glue and water together. You don’t need a lot of this mixture.

Use your paintbrush to spread a little of the glue mixture across a section of your aluminum foil. Tear off a strip of tissue paper and lay it over the glue. Press it down with your fingers.

Continue to paint on the glue and add strips of tissue paper until you’re happy with your artwork.
Spread another thin layer of the glue mixture over the tissue paper. Sprinkle glitter onto the “painting.”

You may also choose to add sequins to your masterpiece. You’ll want to use glue rather than the glue mixture to stick on the sequins.
Enjoy!

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My Current NaNoWriMo Word Count:

19246 / 50000 words. 38% done!

Look What I Did with a Leaf! by Morteza E. Sohi

Welcome to Fantastic Nonfiction Friday!

Last fall, when the leaves began to change colors, I posted about Lois Ehlert’s Leaf Man and I showed you how to create your own leaf man. I also showed you how to press leaves between wax paper and suggested a few ways to use those pressed leaves.

Today’s book teaches you how to make animals out of leaves. It does a much better job than I could ever do. I recommend it highly.

Morteza E. Sohi’s Look What I Did with a Leaf does more than just show you how to create an elephant, a peacock, a fox, a frog, a rooster, and many more animals using leaves. This book also teaches about the life cycle of a leaf and includes a field guide to many types of leaves that are found throughout the United States.

When learning about the life cycle of a leaf, what kid wouldn’t love taking a leaf walk and creating his or her own leaf animal?

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12073 / 50000 words. 24% done!
I didn't write a single word yesterday...
But I'm still ahead of schedule going
into the second weekend!

Create Your Own Marbled Paper

Yesterday you learned that many paper marblers add size to water to make the water thicker. This allows the paint to float on the top. Rather than floating paint on water, today you’ll paint on shaving cream to make your own marbled paper.

Supplies Needed:

Foam Shaving Cream
Paint
Paintbrush
Cardboard
Paper
Paper plate
Cover your work space. Ask an adult to spray a layer of shaving cream onto the paper plate. You want about a half an inch thick layer of shaving cream. Use your cardboard to level the layer of shaving cream.
Choose which colors to use. I used Crayola Kids Paint. You can use any kind of paint you want, but I wouldn’t recommend watercolors.

Paint on top of the shaving cream. Try not to press your brush into the shaving cream. It’s not important that your painting look nice. Just make sure you’ve included all the colors you want on your marbled paper.
Use the handle of your paint brush to swirl the colors together. You’ll need to wipe off the brush handle a few times because the shaving cream clings to it. This will cause the colors to mix together and get muddy.
When you’re happy with your swirled colors, press a piece of paper onto the shaving cream. If you don’t press down hard enough, the paper won’t pick up the paint evenly. It will look like the paper at the top of this picture:
When you press your paper onto the shaving cream, shaving cream will stick to it (of course). Use the clean side of your cardboard to scrape the shaving cream off of the paper. The paint will remain.
You can make two good prints from the same painted shaving cream.

I made prints with copy paper, construction paper, and posterboard. The paint stuck well to all three types of paper.

If you want to make larger sheets of marbled paper, layer the shaving cream onto a cookie sheet instead of a paper plate.

Write a letter to a pen pal on your marbled paper, create your own journal using marbled paper, or hang your marbled paper on you wall.

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My Current NaNoWriMo Word Count:

10544 / 50000 words. 21% done!
I’m pretty pleased with this word count.
Last year it took me 7 days to reach
10,000 words.

Election Day

Whoever your choice may be, don't forget to vote, or remind the adults in your life to vote!