Adventures In Art: Challenge 11 - Things Are Gonna Get Hairy!

Hello and welcome back to Week 11 of the MG Virtual Art Club!
If you have yet to see last week's exhibition, please click here:

https://artatmg.blogspot.com/2020/05/we-are-family-exhibition.html

Before we introduce this week's new challenge, Doris has been busy recreating another famous painting - can you name the artist and the picture?

First correct answer sent to MGartclub@missiongrove.org.uk will receive another piece of Doris' original art work!

Challenge 11 is entitled Things Are Gonna Get Hairy! as we are going to be looking at some pieces of art with either cats or dogs in them. Then after a couple of idea suggestions, you are going to decide how you are going to do your piece of art this week and whether you'll be Team Cat or Team Dog (or both!)

Below are some famous artists' cat and dog art works which might inspire you. At the very end of the post are a few ideas from us too.
We've mentioned Andy Warhol before. He was a big cat fan and did several cat inspired pieces of art.

Ai Weiwei often has his cat in his art studio and has done a series of clever cat pictures.

A very iconic cat is Paul Klee's Cat & Bird picture:

Many children have been inspired by this piece of art to create their own pictures - you can see some examples here:

https://wowartproject.com/2017/05/14/2nd-grade-paul-klee-cat-and-bird-drawings/

Here are some further examples using different materials:

Elizabeth Blackadder is famous for her series of cat paintings, sketches, pastel drawings and etchings:

Her art was even featured on some postage stamps!

We mentioned Romero Britto during our 'Let The Sunshine In' challenge and a lot of Art Clubbers seemed to like his style, so yes, he has done some cat inspired art work too!

We used Gwen John as inspiration in Year 1 a few years ago when we were drawing teddy bears. We applied the same techniques of sketching and then using a light paint wash.

So much for cats, what about dogs? Well dogs have appeared in paintings for years, as centuries ago only rich people could afford to have their paintings done by artists and often had their loyal pets in them too.

Many artists have pet dogs, which they often feature in their art, such as David Hockney.

Craigie Aitchinson often depicts his Bedlington Terrier in his pictures.

Picasso's simple single line drawing of a dog has become a world famous image.

As has Keith Haring's dog motif, which we looked at a few weeks ago in our 'You've Got To Move It' challenge.

....and yes, Romero Britto does dogs too!

Even cats and dogs together!

This brings us neatly to Denise Fiedler, who specialises in cat and dog mixed media art.

These are really simple to do and can be adapted to suit any age - you set how challenging you want your cat or dog to be - how you cut or rip the paper, arrange it, add other collage elements or paint.

Here is a simple collage cat that we created using newspaper:

Cut out (or tear if you want it to look more 'furry') some simple body, head and ear shapes.

Arrange these as you want and stick onto some backing paper.

Cut out two simple ovals in white, some coloured circles and a couple of black lines (these were all from parts of the newspaper). Stick them all down for your cat's eyes.

Then using more black, cut out and add your nose shapes.

We chose to paint ours lightly with watercolours, but you could continue to collage instead.

Add newsprint whiskers and a furry tummy.

Here is one that Rose made for Ms Harding a few years ago, which is framed in her house.

Here are some examples by other children.

Not to leave the dogs out, here is an Andy Warhol cat inspired style picture, but with a dog.

Draw an out line of your dog in pencil - you can do these from your imagination, from another picture or following any of the numerous 'How To Draw A Dog' tutorials, cartoon or otherwise, online.

Out line it with a pen, Sharpies are good as they are permanent. If you don't have a permanent pen outline with pencil, pressing hard to make it as dark as possible.