Tag Archives: art

How to Decorate A Still Life for a Painting

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If you want to be successful at painting a still-life then you need to pay some serious attention to how you set it up first. You need to pay attention to the composition, mood and lighting of the objects that you want to paint. This is why it is important to pay attention to the still life composition by arranging and rearranging the components of the painting until you are satisfied that it is perfect.

A still life is just simply a work of art that depicts inanimate subject matter. Typical food, flowers, plants, rocks, curios glasses, vases, books jewelry, coins and pipes are part of a still life composition but technically any object at all will do. Before the 1700s religious artifacts largely comprised the composition of still lives. They were first seen on the walls of Egyptian tombs.

That is why part of painting a still life is all about choosing objects that have some kind of importance to you. You can even do a portrait of someone by simply depicting their objects. The still life portrait is quite an interesting way of expressing the personality of someone without actually painting them.

Still life lighting is also important. It will figure into how atmospheric or moody your final result will appear on the canvas. Determining whether or not you are using natural or artificial light is also important. This will determine whether or into you are painting short or long shadows in your work. Painting these shadows properly is crucial to achieving realism in painting.

Still lifes can be in any style including realism, impressionism, expressionism and abstract expressionism. Some of the most famous still lifes in history, such as Van Gogh’s sunflowers, bordered on being abstractions.

If you don’t think you can control the lighting for your still life then you may want to take a picture of a still life and proceed from there. Many artists nowadays use this type of technique so that they can paint from an image where the light source is completely constant.

If you are just starting out as a still-life painter just make sure the still-life arrangement you are painting is very simple. Start out by painting a bowl with a couple of pieces of fruit or a simple plant. Then move on to paint more elaborate still lifes when you become better at mastering still life composition.

The art of painting still lifes has been around since the beginning of the art of painting and the popularity of this type of painting is still going strong today!

How to Decorate A Kid’s Room With Pre-School Crafts

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Finger-painting is where it is at when it comes to preschool crafts. All you need is bowls or shallow plates filled with different colors of water-based paint. The child, who is hopefully wearing old clothes, is then allowed to dip his or her palm print in paint and press it onto a piece of paper. Spreading a piece of plastic on the floor and table areas is also recommended whenever you are dealing with finger-painted preschool crafts.

A child’s painted handprint pressed onto a heart shaped piece of paper is one of the simplest gifts that a preschooler can give to a family. Another popular version of this preschool craft is to have the preschool press his or her palm into a slab of wet clay. The clay is then left to dry, painted and presented as a plaque to mom, grandma or whoever else would cherish such a personal and heartfelt gift for Christmas, Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day. At Christmas, single handprints can be dangled from the Christmas tree and used as decorations.

Among the most popular of preschool Easter crafts is the hand-printed daisy. This consists of a number of children placing their palm prints onto a large piece of paper in a circular fashion so the end result resembles the petals of a large flower. Another version of this preschool craft project is to allow the preschools to place their handprint on a large piece of construction paper. These multi-colored handprints are then cut out and placed in a circle around a pie plate or similar object to create a large daisy. This daisy preschool craft project is also sometimes called “The Circle of Friends.”

Favorite Halloween preschool crafts include cutting out eyes out of a sheet to make a ghost costume and decorating pumpkins with big magic markers to create scary faces. Preschoolers can also be encouraged to create their own monsters using a bit of glue and shapes (such a teeth and scary eyes) precut from construction paper or felt.

For Easter, you and the kids can decorate hard-boiled eggs to resemble chicks, lambs and cartoon characters using markers, construction paper and cotton balls. This is one of the more entertaining preschool crafts, especially if you pass the same egg around to several children who have markers or paints and ask each to add a detail to the egg creature.

Homemade bookmarks and cards, colored with crayons markers, make great Mother’s day and Valentine’s day crafts. Photographs of the kids, pasted on the front of the homemade card turn this heartfelt preschool craft into a charming gift.

There is no lack of inspiration for preschool crafts on the Internet. All you have to do to find scores of ideas for preschool crafts is type words like preschool crafts or easy preschool crafts into your search engine and you will most certainly find a project that is sure to engage the imagination and creative talents of your preschooler.