Solar System Art

Last year, a friend of mine volunteered to teach art in my classroom every Friday. I'm not really creative when it comes to art, or very good at art in general, so I was thrilled. Now I'm in a different school and am teaching art by myself again. I find myself teaching many of the lessons she taught last year because the students liked them so much. One of these is a solar system painting.

My friend doesn't know where the original idea for this came from, but she saw them one time and thought they were neat. Here's one of the finished products:

Let me warn you in advance...this is a very time-intensive product for the teacher, so helpers would be nice. We took a 12 x 18 inch piece of white construction paper. Then students spray paint the whole thing with random colors to make a back drop (this is where it's time intensive, since I had my students go one at a time so I could make sure they weren't going to spray themselves). You could use any colors, but we did bright pink, orange, yellow, green, and blue. The kids have a great time with this.



This is before putting the black paint on.



Then take various sized round containers (yogurt containers, milk jug lids, etc. and place them on the paper wherever (these will be the planets). I put some rocks in mine to keep them in place. Then spray paint the entire paper with black spray paint. Then use a brush or toothbrush to splatter some stars on the page before removing the containers.

The projects are so pretty they look really complicated, but they're super easy. They simply take some time to let the layers dry.