Saturday, July 21, 2018

Painting Like Marc Chagall

The Lovers, 1944

MARC CHAGALL


"If I create from the heart, almost everything works; if from the head, almost nothing."

Marc Chagall knew nothing about art as a child, living in drab surroundings of the Jewish quarter of Vitebsk in Belarus. He learned from a friend how to draw by copying  images out of books and decided he wanted to be an artist. 

Chagall developed a surrealistic style of painting that was full of scenes and imagery from his childhood. His highly personal style of modern art combined real and dream worlds into richly colored fantasies where people fly and animals cavort. 



Our Chagall-style paintings were based on these dream-paintings. We called them Life is a Dream

We drew our dreams on large, heavy 18" x 24" drawing paper. To emulate Chagall's dreamy themes, each artist drew him or herself flying, floating, or soaring through the air while carrying or holding something important to them. 





Below them are buildings of some kind, including their own house (real or imaginary). Above is a sun or a moon with a face, and the scene must include at least one or more additional things that are odd, weird, or very strange! 







Once the basic pencil drawing was completed, the objects were outlined and colored in with oil pastels and tempera paints.

The artists found that when they painted thinned tempera over the oil pastels, the resulting oil 'resist' contributed to the dreamy look of their compositions.




















The last step was to fill in the sky with thinned tempera paint and a few chose to add course salt to the wet paint, which produces a strange texture in the paint and a very dreamlike sky for their dream-selves to fly through. 







Friday, July 20, 2018

Painting Like Pablo Picasso

Face of Woman, 1962


PABLO PICASSO

"The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?"

Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printer, ceramist, and stage designer who is considered one of the most influential 20th century artists. 



Picasso's early paintings were very realistic in style, but his painting became more angular and abstract throughout his career as an artist. He explained why above. He also said, "It takes a long time to become young," which may explain how his work evolved from carefully rendered realism to the strange, playful caricatures that we are so familiar with. 

For our artwork, we made our own "Split Personality" sculptures, similar to Picasso's paintings that seem to portray two (or more) faces in one, such as Face of Woman shown above.   

We cut an asymmetrical shape out of corrugated cardboard, divided it into three sections and painted each section a different color and we stamped patterns in some of them.

The we cut out more cardboard shapes for facial features like eyes, ears, and lips, or selected other items to glue on.  



Additional items such as pipe cleaners, craft sticks, beads, straws, and recycled objects were attached to enhance the face sculptures.



The corrugated cardboard made it easy to insert pipe cleaners and other items into the sculpture for "hair" and other embellishments. 



We created stands for our  sculptures by wrapping a chopstick with washi tape and a piece of floral foam in duct tape. Then we inserted the stick into the bottom of the face and the other end into the foam for a perfect base for our sculptures!


This project was definitely a HIT! The kids LOVED their Picasso-style "Split Personality" art sculptures!!!



Thursday, July 19, 2018

Painting Like Jackson Pollock


This week we Painted Like the Masters - always a favorite!

Reflection of the Big Dipper, 1947
JACKSON POLLOCK

"I want to express my feelings, not illustrate them."

On Monday we painted like American artist Jackson Pollock. Nicknamed "Jack the Dripper," his Drip and Splash method of painting included pouring, dripping, splashing, splattering, swirling, flinging, and flicking all sorts of paint onto huge canvases laid flat on the floor of his New York studio. He was the leading force behind the abstract expressionist movement, and considered one of the 20th century's most influential artists. His radical abstract style redefined the relationships between line and color and how a canvas can be filled with expressive imagery. Because of his active style of painting, he was also known as "Action Jackson."

To create our Pollock-style action Paintings, we first covered the studio floor with a large drop cloth. We experimented with latex paint, acrylic paint, and tempera paint to create our masterpieces. We used long handled synthetic brushes to drip, throw, swish, and fling the paint onto large sheets of paper and poster board. 

The latex paint seemed to work the best because it drops from the brush slowly, leaving long stringy lines on the paper. We also liked the glossy surface of this kind of paint after it dries. 
This latex painting, titled "Halloween," is defined by its exciting shapes and seasonal colors. I think I see candy corn swirling around in it!

We tried thinning some of our tempera paint to an almost watercolor consistency, which was great for splattering! 
Abbi also tried spraying with water and allowing the paint to drip and blend for an interesting affect. Then she splattered some more!


We also tried incorporating other types of elements into our 'action paintings,' including collage and stamping paint with sponges and scrubbers. This one, titled Animated, includes collaged images of animated movie, toy, and game characters. 

Here are a few more of our Jackson Pollock-style action paintings. Super fun and super cool!

   





Saturday, July 14, 2018

Zebra Collage




During Animal Week, we made a Zebra collage!


We drew the zebra first on white construction paper. That was tricky, but we did it!





Then we cut lots and lots of strips of scrapbook paper to make the zebra's stripes. We cut most of them a little bit too long so they stuck out a little bit over the lines. 


We glued them on, then we cut out our zebras and used a Sharpie to add some details. Finally, we glued them onto a piece of colored card stock.



Friday, July 13, 2018

Amazing Animals!

Creatures of Earth

The earth is just a speck in space.
Yet such an awesome, wild place,
For creatures great and small!

People of the earth beware!
It’s up to you to love and care
For creatures great and small.

Understand and nurture them.
Save their homes and be a friend
To creatures great and small.

Animals and birds and fish
Insects, reptiles too;
They need us to protect the earth
For creatures and for you!






This week our camps and classes celebrated "Amazing Animals!" 

And, we celebrated children's DRAWINGS in the process. 




Drawing is a child's very first attempt to communicate through the act making marks on paper (or walls or tabletops or sidewalks, etc.) 


It should be obvious that children don't need to be taught to draw! (As they get older, they may want to learn the "tricks" for drawing better, but they figure out drawing as soon as they are able hold a writing implement.) 



In addition, each child develops his or her own drawing system and style as s/he works through the process of expressing their world on paper. 





Children's spontaneous drawings, although often ignored, are often incredibly awesome insights into their interests, knowledge, and how they make sense of the world. 




For this project, we took turns naming random animals to draw on an 18" x 24" sheet of paper. I did not teach them how to draw any of the animals.  



Most of them immediately dove in to draw each one.I was amazed at the accuracy of their drawings! 


Once in a while they were 'stumped' about how to start a drawing, which merely means a lack of information. We found photos of the animal in our resource files or we googled it. Needing more information about something is always a good thing!



We fit our animal drawings into our composition like a puzzle. Proportional sizes did not matter. 







The drawings were completed in a full 3-hour class period. During the next class, we defined each animal by adding colors, patterns, outlines, fur, scales, feathers, and facial details.






Finally, we filled in the background very loosely with soft pastels, which were rubbed and blended for a soft, colorful effect. Then we mounted our drawings on a piece of black poster board, leaving a lovely black border around the outside of the artwork. Each child also got a matted copy of the poem above to display with their masterpiece!
Animal Menagerie, by Abbigail
Animal Menagerie, by Tylee
Animal Menagerie, by Abbey
Our students will continue practicing spontaneous drawing through games and imaginative / story-telling activities suggested in Marjorie and Brent Wilson's classic book, Teaching Children to Draw.