Outdoor Art Expert is a Girls Choice badge set introduced in 2011.
Purpose
When a Girl Scout Senior has earned this badge, she will have learned how to create art outdoors with a focus on the environment.
Activity #1: Explore art outdoors[]
Creative inspiration can spring from the things you experience, so head outside to take in the sights and sounds of the great outdoors. Take a hike, observe a cloud, lie on a hammock, and write in your journal or draw sketches. The ideas you collect will become your guide as you create for each step.
CHOICES—DO ONE:
Find at least three or more public artworks outdoors. Look outdoors for art that people enjoy—it could be statues, sculptures, murals, plaques,
billboards, a fountain, landscaped gardens, or unusually designed buildings. Take a journal and write about or sketch the art and where you found it.
OR
Visit at least one exhibit of outdoor environmental art. Art can excite and educate others about ways to respect and preserve the natural world. Look for environmental art in a museum, gallery, online, or outside in your community. It might be a garden planted over a landfill, a building with a grass roof, a gravel pit converted into an amphitheater, a sculpture made from recycled materials, a wall mural with an eco theme, a photo exhibit highlighting an environmental issue, or a wildlife statue in a park. Take a video of what you see and share the artist’s message with others.
OR
Create with a nature artist. Seek out an artist who uses nature in her art: She might be an art teacher, family friend, or person you meet
at a craft fair, community center, museum, or art gallery. She could be a landscape artist, a jeweler who uses natural objects, a
Leave
No Trace
Remember to practice “Leave No Trace” as you create your outdoor art!
Know Before You Go
Stick to Trails
Trash Your Trash
Leave It As You Find It
Keep Wildlife Wild
Respect Others
“trash-to-treasure” sculptor, or a wildlife photographer. Spend time with her
while she works, or ask her to come speak to your troop.
Find out where she gets materials and inspiration, what her process is for creating, and what impact she hopes her work will make. Ask her to show you her techniques, and make a work of art together.
Activity #2: Make something![]
When you use nature as inspiration to create something, it’s not just aesthetically pleasing but also sends a positive message. What you make allows others to appreciate—and explore—their relationship to nature.
CHOICES—DO ONE:
Design a piece of jewelry inspired by nature. Go outside and find something in nature that moves you—maybe a sunset, ocean view, wildlife, or flowers—and then reproduce it by making something you can wear or give to a friend. Your nature inspiration might show up as a color you choose for a glass-beaded necklace, or in materials you pick for a braided bracelet.
OR
Find five things that do not belong in nature and create a collage or eco-art sculpture. Take a hike on a trail, by a lake, or around your neighborhood to pick up trash—from candy wrappers and soda cans to discarded tires and plastic toys—and then create something. (Safety note: Always wear gloves when collecting items, and avoid anything sharp, like needles, or toxic, like paint cans.) You can plaster your findings into a sculpture, or glue them to canvas with pictures, drawings, and writing for a multimedia project. Name your art piece and include a brief description for what you want to say about preserving the environment, then display it for others at school, in a park office, or a community center.
OR
Make a print using a natural object or one inspired by nature. You can use wood you have at your house or from a home-supply store to create a woodcut relief print by carving a design inspired by nature in a piece of wood, adding printer’s ink to the wood and then pressing the paper onto the wood to make a print. You can make a screen print on a T-shirt or paper with the design you created. (See the next page for instructions.)
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Throughout history, nature has played an important role in music—it influences the sounds and lyrics that artists create. Some artists also use music to communicate their desire to protect nature. Let the sounds of nature be your tool to compile—or make—your own music.
CHOICES—DO ONE:
Produce a nature recording. Record natural sounds (ocean waves, wind rustling through trees, insects buzzing), and human-made ones (a car honking, a jet flying overhead, an off-road vehicle, a person yelling, or the engine of a lawnmower or snowmobile) together. Then share with friends and family to see if they can detect the human-made sounds and the natural sounds.
OR
Create a DIY band for an outdoor performance. Look inside and outside for objects that make sounds. Play percussion on a garbage can. Put coins in a covered can for a shaker. Fill drinking glasses with different levels of water and clink with a spoon. Take a soda bottle and blow inside it. Come up with your own ideas! Invite friends, family members, or younger girls to play the instruments outdoors. Record the sounds they make.
OR
Learn three camp songs about nature and teach them to younger girls. Help keep the Girl Scout singing tradition alive for younger girls by teaching them three nature songs. You can find a song about nature or take a traditional Girl Scout song and change the lyrics to reflect nature. Make sure to include movements and animal sounds when you share the songs— it makes it easier to remember the lyrics, and who doesn’t like to move to music? Take the girls outdoors to sing!
Activity #4: Capture nature digitally[]
When nature photographers take pictures of plants, wildlife, and landscapes, it might mean sitting for hours to snap a blue jay taking flight or being on high alert during a storm in order to capture the instant lightning strikes.
Nature photographers may experience daring adventure and exotic travel, but it starts with technical skills and an eye to shoot nature’s subjects. Try out a different technique for taking pictures outdoors.
CHOICES—DO ONE:
Create a time-lapse project of a scene outdoors. Take pictures of an object outdoors in a single frame at a time over a period of time—a day, week, or month. It might be clouds in
the sky or plants and flowers growing. Then load the images on a computer or use an app to make a time-lapse video. Or print out three of your images and put them together side-by-side to create a triptych.
For More FUN: Print out your time-lapse photos and make them into a flipbook.
OR
Experiment with perspective in nature photography. Camera filters are pieces of glass that go over the lens to help you take great pictures outdoors by reducing the glare or adding color and depth to an image. With a regular camera, filters assist in taking nature shots. (See Best Filters for Nature Photos on this page.) If you have a smartphone camera, experiment by using different filters offered, such as noir, process, chrome, or black and white. Play around with different modes like flash or high dynamic range (HDR). Or find an app that can help you shoot panoramic, make your photos look vintage, or assemble them into a collage. How does it change the look and feel of what you shot?
OR
Create an outdoor music video using a song that reminds you of nature. Find a song you like with a nature theme or lyrics about the outdoors—what images do you see when you listen to it? Jot down ideas, then head outdoors to film scenes to go with your song. Go online to find out how to edit your video footage and add your song as the soundtrack. When it’s ready, share it with friends and family.
Activity #5: Design outdoors[]
In step 3, you learned how environmental art helps educate people about the natural world. Now think of this same idea on a grander scale. Architects and engineers often take cues from nature for their designs. For example, one of the world’s largest buildings in Taiwan is shaped like tall bamboo. A stadium in China looks like a bird’s nest. An Iranian architect designed a temple that resembles a lotus flower. In Dubai, a group of human-made islands form the shape of a palm tree. Try your hand at designing
something transformative outdoors.
CHOICES—DO ONE:
Design an outdoor maze or labyrinth. A puzzle maze has multiple paths, including wrong turns and dead ends, but only one way to get from entrance to goal. No matter how complicated, a labyrinth has a single winding path without choices. Pick one to design, and draw up your sketch. Then use pieces of rope or stones to replicate your design outdoors— maybe in your backyard or at a park. If you’re near a beach, use a stick to draw your design in the sand. Invite others to walk through it.
OR
MAZE
LABYRINTH
Create lighting for an outdoor space. Find a temporary space in your backyard, a park, or a playground to create a light show for friends and family. Make more than one lighting treatment—for example, paint Mason jars with glow-in-the-dark paint. Hang holiday lights on trees or in the shape of a peace sign, heart, or trefoil.* Drop switch-on candles (battery- operated or LED lights) in bottles or hurricane lamps—or hang them from trees with ribbons. Tape colored cellophane over flashlights and position them to shine on trees. Landscape artists often use lighting to showcase beautiful plants, flowers, and trees. Can you think of ways your lighting can do the same?
For More FUN: Add music to your light show.
*You will need permission from the municipal parks department or other relevant agency to create your outdoor space in a park or playground. Please also refer to Girl Scouts Safety Activity Checkpoints on recreational tree climbing.
OR
Design a nature-based art mural for the outdoors. Murals are human-made images on walls or other flat surfaces. Take a walk outside to get inspired, then sketch a design or go on your computer to create a mural that focuses on something in nature. It could be the night sky, a forest, or a message about the environment. If you can, sketch your mural image on a chalkboard, whiteboard, plywood, or a large canvas to see how it would look.