"sometimes I feel Like a Fox" Art Project

If you haven't picked up the beautiful book "Sometimes I Feel Like a Fox" yet, you need to. You can pick up a copy of the book here. Please also make sure to head over to the authors website! Danielle Daniels has created such a beautiful book that not only helps students describe their emotions, while also introducing the Anishnaabe tradition of totem animals. For Canadian teachers, Danielle is Canadian, earning her degree in British Columbia and lives in Ontario. A great book to feature Canadian literature to students. This is an amazing book to read in September. We did an art project surrounding it, and I was overcome by emotion, and by the animals my own students identified with. We used her artwork as a guide. I wish I had pictures of each step of the process. This year I will definitely make sure to document each layer, and add them into this post, however for now you will get the step by step in writing.

Materials:

-Mixed Media paper (can find at a local craft store in a booklet)

-Gesso (also find at a local craft store)

-acrylic paint

-oil pastels

-paint brushes

-water

-blank paper

-pencils

Steps:

After we read the book, I taught my students how to gesso paper and why. You need to mix gesso with a little bit of water. Gesso is meant to prepare the paper for other materials. This allows the paper to stiffen up and creates a textured surface for the materials to stick to. Be cautious with this, gesso never comes out of clothes!

Once we gessoed, we waited for it to dry. We googled Danielle's animal work and went through, talking about what we wanted to create in our own work, and what we really noticed about the layers and colours.

Once the gesso is dry, we talked about acrylic paint and how we would be using it to create the background. We looked at some more of Danielle's work, then they began creating their own backgrounds. We made sure to talk about warm and cool colours, and how mixing them wet creates muddy colours. If students wanted to do a mix of warm and cool, they needed to let the one dry and then paint the other. I also was working on my own at this time, while helping guide kiddos and answer questions.

Again, this part needs to dry. We did the next part on a separate day, however you could do it later on in the day. Students had to sketch their chosen animals. I would leave quite a few pictures of Danielle's animals for students to work from. Students had to tell me why they felt like the animal they chose before they began transferring their sketch to their background.

They will be drawing their animal with oil pastels. Using a solid oil pastel around the figure also helps the figure pop out. All of these were so beautiful and so unique. I had some students think outside of the box as well, showing that they felt like the wind or a fairy! I can't wait to do this project again! This time, there will be pictures of the process, I promise!