Pretty As A Peacock!!

We made awesome Peacocks at Art Camp a couple of weeks ago.

We used a Dick Blick canvas as our background ( we had already used a repurposed board for our rock family portraits so we wanted to mix it up a bit.) The feathers were paint sticks from Sherwin Williams, the bodies were small wooden plaques ( 50 cents and then 40% off - score! ) from Hobby Lobby and the neck and heads were glued together from jumbo crafts sticks, bottle caps and other found items. We used wiggle eyes or Sharpies for the eyes, the beak was fun foam and that thing-y on the top of a peacock's head ( what is that called?) was made from half a peel and stick fun foam snow flake - thank you Ms. Becky for that idea!!

Since we were all about color and painting at Art Camp this year we decided whether or not our peacock feathers world be warm colors or cool colors. Then we used a different color family for the background - hopefully - or in the case of many of the girls, pink. And one little camper had a fairly monochromatic week - orange was the color choice for everything he did - no negotiating!!

The designs on the peacock feathers were made with our fingers. Lots and lots of blended dots. We added in some glitter paint at the end because peacock feathers shimmer.

We read a great book about peacocks and the designs and colors on animals.

It was called Bees, Snails and Peacock Tails by Betsy Franco.
Definitely a great book for a multitude of lessons! I ordered mine on Amazon.
And I, for the life of me, cannot get Blogger or Picasa to let me turn this crazy picture the correct way. But it's a really pretty one so try not to get a crick in your neck! This child completely got the whole complimentary colors concept - blue and orange!! Doesn't hurt that we're in the South and she's probably seen War Eagle and Gators aplenty- ha!!