Kids can explore shapes and colors using stencil shapes and the multicolored inkpad in Stencil Art.
Stencil Art by the editors of Klutz (Klutz, ISBN-10: 1-57054-245-7) is an amazing book and kit that gets kids into the art of stenciling. It’s perfect for the home schooled child as well as the art lover.
Supplies
Created for children ages 8 and up, Stencil Art is more than a book on how to stencil. It includes a pigment inkpad with eight different colors and eight foam tipped dabbers to match each of the colored inks. A black marker is included in the set to add lines, faces, and squiggles to your children’s creations.
In the back of the book are four pull out plastic stencils, a total of 72 different stencil shapes. There are animal shapes such as an elephant and cat, outdoor shapes such as trees and a butterfly, and out-of-this-world shapes such as an alien and rocket ship. The fourth stencil sheet is of different, basic shapes. These shapes include circles, ovals, squares, triangles, and more.
Learning Stenciling
The book itself teaches children how to use stencils. First they learn how to properly use the ink and dabbers. They will also learn about mixing colors, layering, blending, outlining, fading, and how to stencil a shape as half one color and half a different color.
Once children learn about the basics of colors, Stencil Art moves on to teach them how to use the fourth stencil sheet, the geometric shapes. Kids will learn how to use the basic shapes to make unique artwork. For example, they are shown how squares and triangles can be used to make a house, butterflies, and a castle.
Layering shapes is another fun concept taught in Stencil Art. In step-by-step illustrations, kids are shown how to build on to basic shapes to create a fish. This skill is then built upon in the next section on Masking and Layering where children will learn how to stack images on top of each another.
If you are looking for art lessons involving patterns, mandalas are the next big project in Stencil Art. Children will learn how to prepare a page and begin creating an awesome mandala using stencils. The creation of borders and patterns are also covered in the following pages.
Highly Recommended
Stencil Art is a great inspirational tool that gets kids into the art of stencils. The book is filled with illustrations and ideas that are simple enough for kids to learn and includes some more intricate ideas that children can learn with a little practice. There are colorful practice pages throughout the book, encouraging kids to stencil in their own wild creations, such as an underwater scene and a jungle.
This is a great book for home schooling parents who are seeking ideas for art lessons and also for art teachers who are looking for ways to break stencil lessons down into learnable units.
