Watercolor Blob Creatures Inspired by Carla Sonheim

My 4th Quarter 7th graders went out with a bang last week with these whimsical, wonderful imaginary animal/creatures.  I'm teaching out of artist/illustrator Carla Sonheim's book Drawing and Painting Imaginary Animals, my current Featured Artist of the Month.  

This was a great assignment to showcase a lot of the skills my 7th graders had learned in their 8 weeks with me; watercolor, pen & ink zentangling, charcoal, graphite, color schemes, and range of value.

I felt that the one above by Anna Park was especially well done.  The kids started by mixing up at least 2 watercolor pigments (perferablly within a color scheme), wet their paper with clear water in random drops, then dropped their water colors into the water drops.  They could blow it around, or tilt the paper to create more interest, or they could sprinkle smaller droplets of color around the larger blob.   

We let the paper dry overnight, then the next day the kids kept turning their pieces 180 degrees until they found a face or animal or something.  The kids had a lot of fun trying to find something.

Richard Tee above found a bird-like creature, and I love the stripes he added to the legs, and all the zentangling he incorporated.

And I'm finding at least 3 animals that Rachel Kannampuzha picked out and highlighted in her work below.  A brilliant piece Rachel!

I was really impressed that Matthew Flores was able to find at least 6 sweet and scary creatures in his work above.  Wow!!

And Bethany Chen really thrilled all of us by finding this man and his unicorn.

Britney Hong came up with this super sweet octopus-like creature.

 And Amita Muralidharan delighted us with her party animal.

Daniel Chung had a hard time finding anything so he just did his own thing which worked out really well for him.

And sweet little IsabelManalo found these very cool dancers; both people and birds.  These kids just give me so much creativity on this assignment.  

And lastly we have Ashley Perez who took the full 2 hours she had for the final and poured everything she had into her 2 creatures.  Crazy wonderful Ashley!  So proud of you!

I want to thank all my 7th graders for the best year ever!

And a special thank you to Eddie Ponce and Emily Yang for showing up almost everyday to help with the checking in and out of materials for you little ones, and to help keep you kiddos reined in.  LOL  It was a  blast!!!!!!!!!!