Today, as part of our March breACK! 2015 space party, I asked the kids to create their own imagined solar systems. We had two points of inspiration. First, I had them look through an amazing book, The Universe: A Convergence of Art, Music, and Science, (ed. Jay Belloli) that Blaise picked up a long time ago at a book sale. This gave them a sense of different ways in which our solar system is rendered. That book’s no longer in print, but there are plenty of other great titles on the subject, like the National Geographic Kids Space Encyclopedia: The Solar System and Beyond. [Check out page 15: “There Are Other Solar Systems!”] Second, Blaise provided an example of his own, throwing together a quick mixed media collage of an imagined solar system.
Then, the kids got started on their own work. Toby decided to stick with pencil, ink, and coloured gel pens. Bea decided to incorporate some of her collage work from yesterday’s Space Fish art project into the mix. They took their time and thought up all sorts of crazy details about their imagined places. Here are snaps of the results. A brief DIY follows, below.
Toby
Bea
Papa’s Inspiration Piece
Wow!
Space pARTy 101: Imagined Solar Systems.
Materials
A Nice, Heavy Piece of Paper
For Sketching: a range of #2 Pencils, Ink Pens, Gel Pens, Drawing Pencils, Oil Pastels, Watercolours and Tempera Paints – whatever you have around the house.
For Collage: a range of Magazines, Fine Paper Scraps, Discarded Encyclopedias, Newspapers, Flyers, or Photocopies of Favourite Images, as well as Scissors and Glue.
Method
Spend a few moments thinking about what your solar system will look like and how it will operate: Will it have a central sun? One sun or three or seventeen? What type of planets, and how many? And what are their orbits like? What about moons, and stars, and asteroids, and mysterious other space bits?
Then, using whatever materials you would like, sketch, draw, or collage your solar system image or diagram!
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