3. All Kinds of Picture Fun

Bit Pictures

First of all, cut your colored scraps of paper into small bits. Try not to make any of them larger than 1/4 inch across. Cut them into whatever shape you like. Odd shapes will make an interesting picture. Keep the different colors in separate little boxes. Now make a simple drawing on your sheet of dark paper with a pencil.

If you decide to make a simple large flower, for example, it would be a good idea to set a picture of the flower in front of you. Or, perhaps, you can use a real flower as a model. When your drawing is complete paste the bits in place along the lines of the drawing. You can either mix the colors of the bits or make a certain portion all the same color. Your flower will guide you in selecting the best colors.

Easy Batik Pictures

Make your choice of a picture you wish to draw. It can be anything you wish. But supposing you wish to draw a forest scene. Take either a piece of paper or a piece of clean cloth. Draw your picture with crayons. Solidly fill in various items of your picture. If you make a tree, make it a solid brown for the trunk and a solid green for the branches. If you draw a deer, make it of deep colors, such as red and brown.

You are now ready to fill in the background of your picture with water colors. Simply paint over the entire surface of your picture with a single color. The wax in the crayons will keep the water colors from mixing with your first figures. You can, if you like, fill in the vacant areas with two or three background colors.

Cord Pictures

You can make your cord pictures on any subject you like. But let us suppose that you would like to make profiles of noted Americans. You would first of all find a picture of the subject. If it were Abraham Lincoln you would set a picture of Lincoln in front of you. Now lay the cord, in the shape of Lincoln's profile, on a flat piece of wood.

Carefully study the picture as you work and you may be surprised to learn how accurately you can reproduce Lincoln's likeness with lengths of cord. If you prefer, you can trace the outline on the wood and then cover it with your cord.

Glue your cord in place on the wood. When it has dried, paint or shellac it. Hang it on the wall.

Picture Slips

Gather together pieces of cardboard. You can use break­fast cereal boxes or anything else that supplies you with thin pieces of cardboard. Now cut the cardboard into pieces of various shapes and sizes. Make squares, triangles, circles, half-circles, and so forth.

While the sizes should be a bit different, none should be more than twice as large as another. Make ten or twelve of each shape. Color them blue, green, red, and so on.

Set all your pieces in front of you and create pictures of houses, trees, animals, birds, or anything else you like. When you are through with one picture, put all your pieces together again and start all over on another picture. Keep your pieces in a box so they do not get lost.

Circle Pictures

Circle pictures are made up of just one thing — circles. You can make a wide variety of pictures just by drawing circles. You can make large circles, small circles, circles inside circles, circles that cross other circles, and so forth.

You can use either a regular compass to make your cir­cles or you can use round objects, such as cups, saucers, plates.

Suppose you wish to make a camel. Make a large circle for the body, two smaller circles for the humps, another circle for the head, a small circle for the nose. For his legs make a series of small circles with a larger circle for each of the feet. Fill in the eyes and mouth with circles.

You can make all sorts of circle pictures. Just use large circles for large items and a series of small circles in­stead of straight lines. You will probably find it easier to make very small circles with a free hand, rather than with a compass.

Collect your circle pictures into a scrapbook. Label each one, such as Camel, Ostrich, Tree.

Gather and clip all sorts of pictures. The wider the variety the better. Try to find pictures of the sea, the sky, trees, animals, birds, musical instruments, and people in various poses. Whenever you find a good picture clip it and set it in a box, regardless of its kind. You may be surprised how a certain picture will fit into a scene you are creating.

Once you have a collection of pictures, lay a clean sheet of paper on a table in front of you. Lay as many of your clipped pictures as you can all around the sheet so that you can easily see them. Now build a scene. For example, place a ship at an angle on a sea with dark clouds overhead. Or you might place a farmer in an orchard of various kinds of trees. When you have created an interesting scene, paste on the pieces. Collect your scenes in a scrapbook.

Tin-Can Heads

Since cans are plentiful, select those that are clean and smooth. If necessary, remove the paper labels, rinse off the cans and dry them. Try to get cans of all sizes. Both round and square ones are good.

Set several cans in front of you and draw all kinds of heads.

Use your darker crayons, since they will show up better on the tin. Fill in the eyes, nose, mouth, teeth, ears, and so on. Wavy lines at the forehead and on the top of the can and on the back will make the hair.

One of the best ways to make a tin-can head is to work with a photograph as a model. You can find various pictures in magazines and newspapers that you can copy.

Another way to make tin can heads an interesting pro­ject is to use cans of different sizes, each one larger than its neighbor. Set them in order on your shelf and they make an attractive display.

Poke Pictures

Make your poke pictures by folding a piece of paper. For your first one, simply fold it over once. Now poke holes through the folded sheet with a pencil. (If you have a regular paper punch, so much the better, but a pencil will serve nicely.) Now open the sheet and see what kind of a picture you have.

Little Outlines

First of all, cut out a number of cards out of dark paper. Make them of the same size, about 2 by 3 inches. Now draw outlines of various objects on light colored paper. Use different shades of light paper, such as white, yellow, orange, pale green. (By pasting light-colored outlines on dark-colored background cards you make a good contrast.) Cut out these outlines and paste each one on a separate card.

Here are some good ideas for outlines. People, animals, birds, fish, insects, trees, flowers, vase, table, chair, half-moon, stars, hands, heads, states of the union, foreign countries, automobiles, motorcycle, bicycle, airplane, ship, canoe, church, school, house.

Wood Stamping

Get a piece of flat, smooth wood. Sand it, if you like, to make it smoother. Any size or shape will serve. You can use a square, triangle, or circle. A diameter of five or six inches is good. With a pencil, mark out your de­sign, such as a star or your name or initials. You can even make simple scenes, such as a tree and house. Now stamp out your design by pounding nail holes along the pencil mark.

Place them about a quarter of an inch apart. Make larger holes for heavier objects, such as a tree trunk, and smaller holes when creating smaller objects, such as leaves. You can produce short holes by holding the nail straight over the wood and longer holes by hold­ing it at a slant. Use nails of different sizes.

String Designs

First of all, make a simple wooden frame. Make it from pieces of wood about 1 inch wide and 1/2inch thick. Nail it together at the corners with brads and short wooden braces. The frame can be any shape you like, but for your first one it would be best to make an oblong. Make it about 9 by 12 inches. Now place thumbtacks all around the back side of the frame. Push them about half way in. Space them about 2 inch apart. Get some string or thin cord and you are ready to make your designs.

Your designs are made simply by drawing your string across the frame, from thumbtack to thumbtack. You can go in any direction you like. Cross the strings in any way that makes an interesting pattern. Go back and forth, up and down, and at all sorts of angles. As you work, you will see a pattern develop within the frame.

Appliqué Decoration

Appliqué work is the art of making decorations by applying one material to another. It is a simple but very satisfying kind of handcraft work.

Do you have something about the house or yard that would look prettier with a design or a picture on it?

How about giving your wastebasket an attractive appear­ance by covering it with appliqué pictures? And maybe you can make a gift box look more sparkling by use of appliqué designs. There is no end to the number of things you can do.

Cut out some good, colored pictures from old magazines. Or, you can even make your own colored pictures. Cut the picture away from the rest of the paper. You can now decide where you wish to paste the picture. The kind of pictures that you have will be a good clue as to their use. For example, a picture of a forest is suitable for a homemade book cover, if the book is about nature. Or, funny pictures could be pasted to game or toy boxes.

Number Pictures

Make a large number 3 in the center of your sheet. Now try to draw a picture by using the 3 as the start of your drawing. Turn your imagination loose and look at the figure as the beginning of a picture. For example, you might see that the right side of a 3 could be turned into an animal profile.

If you fill in an eye and ear you have the beginning of an animal face. Now continue your drawing on the left side of the 3by making the animal's body and legs.

Or maybe the 3 looks more like the side of a vase to you. If so, you could draw the other side and draw some flowers for the vase. Or you could fill in the other side and make a comic face out of the figure.

You can use any numbers you like as the starting point for your number pictures. Be sure to make the number extra dark so that others can see that the completed picture started from a number.

Stencil Fun

Once you know how to make your first stencil, you will know how to make any kind of stencil. Here is how to do it. Select the picture or drawing that you wish to make. Supposing it is a comic face. Draw a comic face on a piece of stiff paper. Do not fill in small details, such as strands of hair. Do fill in the features, such as eyes and mouth. Now cut away from the rest of the paper, the items that you wish to appear in your stencil, such as the features. Do not cut around the outside of the face, but leave it in a frame of paper.

Set your stencil on a piece of clean paper. You can now see that when you hold it on the paper you can draw into the cut away portions and make a picture on the clean sheet.

Potato Prints

Take a medium size, firm potato. Wash and dry it. Cut it in half. Set one half aside. Draw a picture or a design on the cut end of the other half. Do this by mak­ing a raised design on the potato. Cut away the portions of that potato that are not concerned with the design. Make the printing part strong by keeping it thick and low. If you are making your initials, be sure to carve them on backwards so that when printed they will come out correctly.

You are now ready to apply an ink to your potato. A waterproof ink or thick water-color paint will serve. You can try other paints, if necessary. Press your design onto the ink. Do not get it too wet. Now press the potato onto a piece of paper and you have the printed design.

A Cardboard Compass

Cut a piece of stiff cardboard into a strip about one foot long and 1/2 inch wide. Snip the corners off a bit. Make a small hole in the strip about 1/2inch from the end. Your pencil will set in this hole when you make the edges. Now find out the radius of the circle you wish to draw. (The radius is the distance from the center of a circle to its edge.)

Suppose you wish to make a circle with a 3-inch radius. Just measure 3 inches back from the pencil hole and make a mark on the strip. Stick a pin through the strip at this mark. Set the pin on your paper and set the pencil in the hole at the other end. Swing it around and you have a circle with a 3-inch radius.

You can create interesting designs just by swinging your compass about on different points of the paper.

An Easel For An Artist

Get an ordinary grocery carton box. If possible, get one that is about a foot high. If it has a lid, remove it. Now set a corner of the box before you. Draw a straight line from the top of a corner down a side and to a point at the bottom of the box about seven inches away from the bottom corner which is directly below the top corner from which you began. Now do the same thing with the other side of the box. You will now have two lines that form a triangle. Cut down these two lines. Now cut in a straight line across the bottom of the box from one end of a cut to the other end of a cut. You now have your easel free from the rest of the box. Cut notches—opposite each other—on the sloping sides of the easel. These notches will hold the picture on the easel.

Paint or decorate your easel with paint or by covering it with clipped pictures.

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