Sunday, November 24, 2013

What to do with all these leaves?

Fall is here and leaves are everywhere. The variety of shapes and colors is amazing. There’s an inspiring children’s book called Look What I Did with a Leaf by Morteza Sohi. The book describes how to make pictures with a variety of leaves. 

I used old books to flatten my leaves and mounted them on card stock. Below are photos of my leaf artwork.

A leaf project could be used to teach art as well as leaf identification.  I found working with leaves very relaxing. 



The cow is one of my favorites.  The head is made from a Tulip Poplar leaf. (I optimized the photo for quicker web page loading, and lost some color depth in the image.)



The narrow leaves on the butterfly are from a Willow Oak. The dark dots were punched from a leaf.


This aquarium scene has an oak leaf representing seaweed in the bottom right. Remember that White Oaks have rounded lobes and Red Oaks are pointed.


This parrot is perched on a branch made with fern leaves.


The body of the owl is a Birch leaf.



A Ginkgo leaf makes a nice tail on this fish. I laminated the scene on a small piece of card stock and hung it as part of a mobile.

Friday, November 1, 2013