All the animals of a farm can be modeled and painted. When they are skilfully made they are very pretty and add much to the picture and when they are done unskilfully it is fun to have people guess what they were meant for. However, with a little practice very presentable animals can be modeled. It is easier to make them in clay than to draw them.
A gypsy camp, with tents and open fires (bits of yellow and red tissue-paper), under a black kettle (made of clay and painted) swung on a forked stick, can easily be made.
Of course with tin or lead soldiers the number of games one can invent with these tiny settlements is innumerable. One favorite with some children is the attack and capture of the Filipino village by American troops. Sometimes it is burned, and this is always a stirring spectacle. Indeed with tin soldiers (which are just now unjustly out of favor) one"s range of subjects is unlimited, and one always has plenty of inhabitants for any settlement. An army post can be made, with a fort and barracks and a wide green parade ground with the regiment drawn up in line for dress-parade. A tiny American flag flutters from the flag-pole and after the sunset gun booms (a fire-cracker exploded or only some one striking a blow on a tin pan) it can be lowered to the ground while the best whistler of the company executes "The Star-Spangled Banner."
INDOOR OCCUPATIONS AND THINGS TO MAKE
Painting
Painting is an occupation which is within almost everybody"s power, and of which one tires very slowly or perhaps not at all. By painting we mean coloring old pictures rather than making new ones, since making new ones--from nature or imagination--require separate gifts. On a wet afternoon--or, if it is permitted, on Sunday afternoon--coloring the pictures in a sc.r.a.pbook is a very pleasant and useful employment. After dark, painting is not a very wise occupation, because, in an artificial light, colors cannot be properly distinguished.
All shops that sell artists" materials keep painting-books. But old ill.u.s.trated papers do very well.
Flags
An even more interesting thing to do with a paint-box is to make a collection of the flags of all nations. And when those are all done, you will find colored pages of them in any large dictionary, and elsewhere too,--you might get possession of an old shipping guide, and copy Lloyd"s signal code from it.
Maps
Coloring maps is interesting, but is more difficult than you might perhaps think, owing to the skill required in laying an even surface of paint on an irregular s.p.a.ce. The middle of the country does not cause much trouble, but when it comes to the jagged frontier line the brush has to be very carefully handled. To wet the whole map with a wet brush at the outset is a help. Perhaps before starting in earnest on a map it would be best to practice a little with irregular-shaped s.p.a.ces on another piece of paper.
Magic-Lantern Slides
If you have a magic lantern in the house you can paint some home-made slides. The colors should be as gay as possible. The best home-made slides are those which ill.u.s.trate a home-made story; and the fact that you cannot draw or paint really well should not discourage you at all.
A simpler way of making slides is to hold the gla.s.s over a candle until one side is covered with lamp black and then with a sharp stick to draw outline pictures on it.
Another way is to cut out silhouettes in black paper, or colored tracing-paper, and stick them to the gla.s.s. In copying a picture on a slide put the gla.s.s over the picture and draw the outline with a fine brush dipped in Indian ink. Then paint. All painting on slides should be covered with fixing varnish, or it will rub off.
Illuminating
As a change from painting there is illuminating, for which smaller brushes and gold and silver paint are needed. Illuminating texts is a favorite Sunday afternoon employment.
Pen and Ink Work
There is also pen and ink drawing, mistakenly called "etching," for which you require a tiny pen, known as a mapping pen, and a cake of Indian ink. If the library contains a volume of old wood-cuts, particularly _Bewick"s Birds_ or _Bewick"s Quadrupeds_, you will have no lack of pictures to copy.
Chalks
In place of paints a box of chalks will serve very well.
Tracing
Smaller children, who have not yet learned to paint properly, often like to trace pictures either on tracing paper held over the picture, or on ordinary thin paper held over the picture against the window pane.
p.r.i.c.king Pictures
Pictures can also be p.r.i.c.ked with a pin, but in this case some one must draw it first. You follow the outline with little pin p.r.i.c.ks close together, holding the paper on a cushion while you p.r.i.c.k it.
Then the picture is held up to the window for the light to shine through the holes.
Easter Eggs
Home-made Easter eggs are made by painting pictures or messages on eggs that have been hard-boiled, or by merely boiling them in water containing cochineal or some other coloring material. In Germany it is the custom for Easter eggs to be hidden about in the house and garden, and for the family to hunt for them before breakfast--a plan that might very well be taken up by us.
Spatter-Work
Paper and cardboard articles can be prettily decorated by spatter-work. Ferns are the favorite shapes to use. You first pin them on whatever it is that is to be ornamented in this way, arranging them as prettily as possible. Then rub some Indian ink in water on a saucer until it is quite thick. Dip an old tooth-brush lightly into the ink, and, holding it over the cardboard, rub the bristles gently across a fine tooth comb. This will send a spray of ink over the cardboard. Do this again and again until the tone is deep enough, and try also to graduate it. It must be remembered that the ink when dry is much darker than when wet. Then remove the ferns, when under each there will be a white s.p.a.ce exactly reproducing their beautiful shape. If you like you can paint in their veins and shade them; but this is not really necessary. Colored paints can be used instead of Indian ink.
Sc.r.a.pbooks
Making sc.r.a.pbooks is always a pleasant and useful employment, whether for yourself or for children in hospitals or districts, and there was never so good an opportunity as now of getting interesting pictures.
These you select from odd numbers of magazines, Christmas numbers, ill.u.s.trated papers, and advertis.e.m.e.nts. Sc.r.a.ps are very useful to fill up odd corners. In choosing pictures for your own sc.r.a.pbook it is better to select only those that you really believe in and can find a reason for using, than to take everything that seems likely to fit. By choosing the pictures with this care you make the work more interesting and the book peculiarly your own. But in making a sc.r.a.pbook as a present for some one that you know, you will, of course, in choosing pictures, try to put yourself in his place and choose as you think that he would.
Empty sc.r.a.pbooks can be bought; or you can make one by taking (for a large one) an old business ledger, which some one whom you know is certain to be able to give you, or (for a small one) an ordinary old exercise-book, and then cutting out every other page about half an inch from the st.i.tching. This is to allow room for the extra thickness which the pictures will give to the book. Or you can sew sheets of brown paper together.
For sticking on the pictures, use paste rather than gum; and when it is done, press the book under quite a light weight, with sheets of paper between the pages.
Sc.r.a.pbooks for Hospitals
Children that are ill are often too weak to hold up a large book and turn over the leaves. There are two ways of saving them this exertion and yet giving them pleasure from pictures. One is to get several large sheets of cardboard and cover them with pictures and sc.r.a.ps on both sides, and bind them round with ribbon. These can be enclosed in a box and sent to the matron. She will distribute the cards among the children, and when they have looked at each thoroughly they can exchange it for another. Another way is to use folding books which are more easy to hold than ordinary turning-over ones, and you can make them at home very simply by covering half a dozen or more cards of the same size (post-cards make capital _little_ books) with red linen, and then sewing them edge to edge so as to get them all in a row. In covering the cards with the linen--red is not compulsory, but it is a good color to choose--it is better to paste it on as well as to sew it round the three edges (a fold will come on one side), because then when you stick on the pictures they will not c.o.c.kle up. Pictures for hospital sc.r.a.pbooks should be bright and gay. Colored ones are best, but if you cannot get them already colored you can paint them.
Painting a sc.r.a.pbook is one of the best of employments.
Composite Sc.r.a.pbooks
Sometimes it happens that you get very tired of one of the pictures in your sc.r.a.pbook. A good way to make it fresh and interesting again is to introduce new people or things. You will easily find among your store of loose pictures a horse and cart, or a dog, or a man, or a giraffe, which, when cut out, will fit in amusingly somewhere in the old picture. If you like, a whole book can be altered reasonably in this way, or made ridiculous throughout.
Sc.r.a.p-Covered Screens
A screen is an even more interesting thing to make than a sc.r.a.pbook.
The first thing to get is the framework of the screen, which will either be an old one the covering of which needs renewing, or a new one made by the carpenter. The next thing is to cover it with canvas, which you must stretch on tightly and fasten with small tacks; and over this should be pasted another covering of stout paper, of whatever color you want for a background to the pictures. Paste mixed with size should be used in sticking it. After the pictures are all arranged they should be stuck with the same material, and a coat of paper varnish given to the whole, so that it can be cleaned occasionally.