Kitah Daled’s Outer Space Zoo Illustration

The Kitah Daled children are storytellers. In every part of their play they are telling a story. They also are extremely interested in drawing. This led us to create an imaginative illustration for the auction.

During an afternoon circle time, Morah Jessica asked the children what they wanted to draw or paint for their Auction art. There were a variety of suggestions. Some children wanted animals, some wanted outer space and rocket ships. There were also requests for flowers, rainbows, and unicorns. We decided to make a story involving all of these elements. 

Together the children wrote and illustrated a story called OuterSpace Zoo. Each child came up with their own page in the story.

Once we knew what the story was, we discussed how to make the painting. The children wanted to both paint and draw. They wanted it to have sparkly colors and to include all of the characters from the book.

In the Atelier, the children were presented with a large sheet of watercolor paper, images of the Milky Way, and acrylic inks in corresponding colors. Using the images as reference, the children painted their version of outer space. The children sprinkled gold and silver foil over the wet paint to create stars.

Next, the children were offered a large clear plastic sheet to draw on with acrylic markers. They drew the moon which is the setting for the story. 

The children drew the other characters from the story on art paper with colored pencils. Then they cut their drawings out and adhered the images to the background using Glue Dots.

The finished piece was secured in a large black frame.