Art Workshop: Dissecting a mural

Modern Art 4 Kids recently worked with Today's Urban Renewal Network for their annual Parent's Night Out at Christmastime.

We even got a little mention in our local newspaper, which was really cool.

During this art workshop, we offered two stations: the children could create collages (with glitter pens, which were a huge hit), as well as draw with markers. On the outside patio, Michael offered a paint workshop, which was the second station.

Needless to say, the kids made a beeline for the patio so they could paint with actual spray paint. I have no hard feelings. I don't blame the kids for wanting to experiment with spray paint!

We laid out a large square of canvas material. The children had the opportunity to paint with acrylics and brushes and/or spray paint. This is an activity that requires adequate ventilation as well as face masks. For this particular event, the word "Hope" was drawn on the canvas, so the children could have a starting point. There is nothing more defeating than staring at a blank canvas.

After so many eager hands touched it, the painting took on a life of its own, as all really good art projects tend to do. They added black at the end, to define the shapes and give the piece a finished look. Once the painting was done and it dried, Michael cut it up into large squares. He then stapled each panel onto its own individual frame. Several of the kids who worked on this project from beginning to end were rewarded for their efforts and got to take a painting home. They were extremely proud and happy with their accomplishment.

When you work with middle school aged children and up, you have to be prepared for a certain amount of attitude. Lots of times, they are perfectly happy to bypass whatever it is you have planned to teach them. They would much rather text or talk to their friends. But what I noticed was, the minute some of these kids became invested in their project, their attitude just vanished. They were really into their artwork, they were quiet, at peace, and focused. And that is quite a breakthrough. It also displays the power of art and creative expression in a person's life.

Filling in the canvas with shapes and color.

Painting with aerosol cans is much more challenging than you'd think.

Hope.

Adding the black really defined the shapes.

After the paint dried, Michael cut the canvas into squares. Then they stretched each panel onto its own individual frame. In this pic, they are attaching the canvas to the frame with a staple gun.

The final result. Michael, with several children who participated on this project. They were extremely happy and proud to be a part of this event.

Open House art display

The fall semester at my homeschool co-op is just about over (one more class--wooo hooo!) We've had a great semester thus far. I had a whole new crop of students this time around. I'll admit, not seeing all the little familiar faces that I've grown accustomed to made me a little wistful. But by the end of this semester, I grew to love my entire class. They are an awesome group of little artists. They made my job easy.

Displays are always a challenge because there is always so much stuff. What I decided to do was pare down to the most interesting projects and display those.

Overall, an awesome night and an even more awesome fall semester.

I took the best projects from each lesson we covered. Klimt, O'Keefe, Oldenburg, and Van Gogh were a few of the artists we studied this semester.

My students were also assigned a presentation on their favorite artists. I plan on featuring that really cool cell phone sculpture soon. Also, I totally loved the Bob Ross report. Completely unexpected but so much fun. "Happy little trees..."

My son decided to do his report on Frida Kahlo. Okay, okay, I have to admit I had a little bit of influence on his decision-making, but it turned out really well.

A few of the papier mache letters that took us nearly a month to complete!

Amazing collages, sculptures and drawings.

Brotherly love and fun on open house.

My two sons and budding artists, Sol and Cyan, who took my class this semester.

Amazing collage video

I am a huge fan of collage. There is something about manipulating paper into whatever you want it to be that is so hugely satisfying. Whenever we do collage projects, I get really into it and I experience a meditative state where my mind stop racing from one topic to another and I can hear all of the sounds around me.

Whenever my kids have projects due for school, my go-to technique is collage. Not only because it is simple and inexpensive, but I have already amassed a large collection of supplies (scissors, #11 x-acto blades, glue sticks, rubber cement, colored paper, magazine cut-outs) so I never have to go out and buy anything. Visually, it is very interesting and makes quite an impact.

I have a huge bin of scrapbooking paper that I can't bear to throw away. Each and every time we make a collage, the scraps just end up being put back in the bin. Added to that are pieces of patterned paper, interesting things I've torn out of magazines, hand-painted paper that I've cut into pieces.

I saw this video recently and it made me wish I'd thought of it first. My kids loved watching it. It is so amazingly creative!

Wax Resist: Batik

I've always wanted to try and create a project that had a batik effect. I love the look of batik, the way little cracks of the wax create a very unique design on the fabric. No two batik designs are the same.

I've learned the actual batik technique back in college, with the hot wax and dye baths. It was so fun and amazing. I still have them floating around my house. I think I wanted to build a career in batik but then reality set in and I figured I really couldn't do much with a degree in batik, you know? Heh.

So I wanted to try something with my students that is way less complicated than hot wax and dyes but would sort of give the same effect, using a wax resist technique.

• Finding the right kind of paper is key. You don't want to use a thick watercolor paper because when you get to the crumbling step, it will rip and tear in the sharp edges. And you don't want to use a super flimsy piece of paper because it won't stand up to all the oil pastel you will put on it. I settled on some Canson (student grade) watercolor paper. Choose whatever size you'd like. We used a 9 X 12 size sheet due to time issues, but I think a larger size would be more interesting visually.
• Most students will want to use a pencil to sketch out their design. Just encourage them to use light strokes. I found that drawing organic, natural shapes (round, large and wavy) worked best with the batik technique.
• Be sure to instruct students to allow space in between each shape. This white part of the paper will mimic the effect of the wax in the traditional technique. It's very important that they leave a space in between their shapes.
  
• When the students begin to color in their shapes, make sure they are pressing down with the oil pastel crayon. This will ensure that their colors remain vibrant and true. They should use a variety of colors, but using monochromatic color scheme will look great, too.
• Once their entire sheet of paper has been filled in and colored, have each student crumble up their paper slowly. Some students will really get into it and crumble it up and abuse the process, but make them do the crumbling softly, or else they will rip their paper.
  
• The students should straighten out their crumbled paper. Repeat the process. The goal is make cracks in the oil pastel because this is whats going to give it the wax resist look and feel.
• Flatten out the piece of paper as best you can. You might want to have your students lay their paper under a heavy book or their heavy school folder for a few minutes while you read them a story about batik.
• Now they are ready for the next step: watercolor. I used a very light gray watercolor in my example, and for some reason it didn't really show up in the scan of the image. You could use black, which makes for a very dramatic effect. Dark blue works well, too. The watercolor will seep onto the non-colored parts of your design.
  
• Lay out your batik-inspired designs to dry.
  
• As the watercolor dries, you will begin to notice how the watercolor has seeped into the fine little cracks of oil pastel, creating a really cool batik effect.

I created the design above as an example for my 3rd-6th grade students.

Surrealist Collage

Surrealists liked to paint as if in a dream world. This is why Surrealism doesn't always make sense. Surrealist paintings even create an unsettling feeling with the viewer, much like dreams do. I've always been haunted by such paintings by the artist Giorgio de Chirico, such as The Mystery and Melancholy of a Street.

The thing just gives me the heebie jeebies. Heh.

I wanted to give my students the opportunity to create wacky, Surrealist-inspired collages, minus the haunting, melancholy feeling. These are elementary students, you know. A good way to find images that can be juxtaposed in an interesting way is to use magazine cut-outs. Finally, all the magazines I have laying around my home that I never want to throw out because you just never know when you're gonna need them have been put to good use.

The cut-outs, along with regular pieces of scrapbooking paper gave this project that authentic randomness that is Surrealism. The collages turned out really cool. The students had a blast going through all of the magazine scraps and reinterpreting them in their collage. Oh, one handy tip is to be mindful of the magazine cut-outs that you allow your students to look through. I didn't just toss stacks of magazines in front of them. I went through each mag, tore out what I thought would be great to use and collected a pile that way. InStyle ads are very suggestive, and you don't want to pollute the minds of the very young, now do we?

• Since you'll be somewhat censoring the ads you are presenting to your class, it'll take you a few days to prepare for this lesson to collect everything you need.
• Some things I collected were giant pics of food, skateboards, animals, interesting backgrounds, make-up ads, random body parts, etc.
• Though the students could create a perfectly good collage comprised of all mag cut-outs, offer pieces of multi-colored collage paper as well.
• I prefer to use good quality glue-sticks when creating a collage. It is just tacky enough to put your images down, but it doesn't make the whole process overly sloppy. I don't recommend Elmer's Glue because the students get carried away with it. Rubber cement is great, as long as the container has a brush inside. It's actually much more archival than a glue stick.
• The collages can be created on poster board, Bristol board, construction paper, whatever paper you have on hand that is sturdy enough to take the weight of the cut-outs and glue. Also, the size is completely up to you and the time frame you have available. In my 45-50 minute-long class, a 9 X 12 is large enough.
• Encourage students to be neat with their cutting skills, taking their cuts all the way down to the edge of their images. It just makes the overall appearance that much nicer.
• The finished collages were so amazing and very humorous! We had a good laugh at some of the random ideas that were generated from this project.

The collage above was created by a 5th grader.

Henri Matisse: Collage

Henri Matisse was a printmaker, a sculptor and most notably a painter from France. Matisse created paintings that were bursting with expression and discordant colors. After an art show in 1905, critics started calling him a "Fauve", which means wild beast in French.

Later in life when his health began to fail, Matisse took to his bed and began to create large-scale collages, which is cut paper on canvas. See the post about Henri Matisse, Painting with Scissors.

I decided to create a project plan inspired by Matisse's Beasts of the Sea. This is a great lesson for the small classroom and the larger classroom alike. It's also a wonderful homeschool activity for the kinesthetic learner. Students really enjoy this hands-on activity!

I can email a printable pdf file with instructions for Matisse's Beasts of the Sea lesson for just $5. Click the “Buy Now” button below to access PayPal for same day delivery.

The artwork above was created by a 7th grader.

Carmen Lomas Garza: Watercolor cactus

Carmen Lomas Garza is a Latina narrative artist who created images about the everyday events in the lives of Mexican Americans based on her memories and experiences in South Texas. Although she wouldn't be considered a "modern artist" because of the time period in which she was working, I thought it was important to share with the students that Garza validated styles classified as "folk art", and that her imagery was powerful, even in it's simplicity.

I was inspired by one of her pieces, Prickly Pear/ A little piece of my heart because of it's illustrative quality. For this project, I kept the materials to a minimum, so that the students could really explore the creative and technical skills they've acquired while working with paint and color pencils.

• Hand out 9 X 12 sheets of Bristol board or Canson watercolor paper. When you are using a wet medium and applying a dry one, you need a paper that can hold up. A floppy piece of construction paper/poster board/drawing paper will simply not do.
• I had several pictures of different varieties of cactus and I showed them to the students, so they would be inspired by all the shapes and colors. They picked their favorite and completed a light sketch.
• Remind students that whenever they are going to use watercolor, any/all of their pencil lines will show through. So they should practice with a light hand.
• After students completed their sketch, they painted their cacti using watercolor paint.
• Once that was dry, they painted a watercolor wash over the background, using several different colors, to give it a rich look.
  
• I handed out prismacolor pencils to the students so that they could enhance the shape of their cactus. Forget using cheap student grade color pencils. All they will do is break down your paper and possible create holes. You will never get any sort of vibrant color from them so toss them out and invest in a good quality student grade and/or artist grade set from Dick Blick. Personally, I am a loyal fan of Prismacolor pencils, but I understand that they are a little too pricey for the classroom. I've had a set for the past fifteen years that are still in great condition.
• Last step is to give the watercolor a tactile edge by cutting out pieces of scrapbooking paper to create the spines/thorns of the cactus. Encourage students to be very sparing of the glue, or else they will make a mess! I prefer stick glue to liquid.

The artwork above was created by a fifth grader.

Henri Matisse: "Painting with Scissors"

Over here at Modern Art 4 Kids, we are no strangers to Henri Matisse, the most beloved Fauve of all! When Matisse was nearly 72 years old, he became ill and it was difficult for him to stand and paint. However, this did not damper his creativity. He began a new technique, which he called, "painting with scissors", which was painting large sheets of paper with different colors using gouache, an opaque watercolor. He would then cut beautiful, organic, free-flowing shapes with scissors. "Une seconde vie”, a second life, was what Matisse called the last fourteen years of his life, working on his collages, or cut outs.

Here is where it gets good.

He used several assistants to be his "arms and legs", moving and arranging his cut outs along the walls of his studio. I decided to try our own painting with scissors workshop, with each student taking a turn being the artist, while the rest of the students became the assistants.

"Move it a little to the right."
"To the left!"
"Ok, a little more...a little more. No! Go back. Tilt it. Ok, that looks good."

Needless to say, it was harder than it seemed! Trying to convey your vision as an artist is quite challenging when you have to rely on someone else to help you bring it to life. But it was alot of fun. We all shared a good laugh that day. We also learned just how tenacious and dedicated Henri Matisse was, to continue his creative work well into his 80’s. Matisse’s cut-outs are among the most admired and influential works of his entire career.

• I used an inexpensive poster board and painted each sheet in a different color using tempera paint. Tempera paint is very similar in texture and consistency to gouache paint.
• I tried to use a wide variety of colors.
  
• After each sheet dried, I cut shapes out myself. You don't have to be precise or crazy analytical, just think organic and free-flowing, just like Matisse.
• If you have the time in class, you can have your students take care of this step. Cutting out shapes is fun. Since I wouldn't have the time in class, I did this step at home.
  

• After all the paint was dry and I cut various shapes into the poster board, I arranged the shapes into piles, according to color and laid them out on the table.
  
• This made it easy for each appointed artist to find what they were looking for.
• The colors were vibrant and the shapes themselves took their cue from Matisse's work.
• I made sure to show the students several examples of Matisse's cut out art.
  

• Each student took turns being "artist".
• Since we have several students in class and not enough cut out shapes to go around, I had the students mount their shapes up on the wall using small strips of masking tape.
• This made it easy to move around and to remove at the end of each student's design.
• I contemplated using push pins, but I didn't want to make a bunch of holes in the cut out shapes--I also didn't want to poke holes in the wall (since we rent the building!).
• The tape ended up working just fine.
• Each artist had to speak clearly and had to know exactly what their vision was. The assistants just had to have patience. :)
  

The finished projects came out beautifully. They were simple yet had the same visual punch that Matisse had. This is definitely a project that I would consider doing again. It was fun to use such large shapes against the wall. Its so boring to use the same, small pieces of scrapbooking paper in our collages. This time we got to use bold and graphic shapes. I also recycled all the shapes for the next week when I let each student create their own smaller-scale collage. No assistants this time, just their own hands and artistic abilities.

Henri Matisse in his studio, working on his famous cut outs.

Marc Chagall: stained glass windows

I promise that I'll update this blog more often. Its Spring here in So Cal, and it feels good to be out in the sunshine instead of sitting in front of a computer screen!

As I've said before, this blog might venture a little off track in terms of modern art. This year, we've focused on lots of fundamentals, so what we've been creating in the classroom is a little different from what we've done in the past.

But back to some fabulous modern art in the form of stained glass windows by Marc Chagall. Chagall was a wonderfully whimsical artist who was a born in Russia. Being Jewish, many of his paintings reflect a religious overtone. Chagall is most known for his vibrant use of color, as well as the stained glass windows at the Metz Cathedral in France. He was entranced by the way the light reflected through the stained glass, and how it was constantly changing. This was a project he took on while he was in his 70's!

I wanted to create a paper project that had the similar effect of stained glass. Taking cues from that old elementary school project of melting crayons between wax paper, this project involves torn colored tissue paper and matte medium.

• Consider setting up three work stations: one to sort through the tissue paper and lay out design, another to glue down design with matte medium and a third to iron the designs.
• Before class, I went ahead and cut the wax paper to mimic the shape of a rounded window. Each student
  
• Instruct your students to create a design using torn pieces of colored tissue paper. I bought the big pack of tissue paper that contained a huge variety of colors. Also a wide, shallow rubbermaid bin to contain all of the torn pieces of tissue paper you are bound collect. Discourage the use of scissors because you want the overall feel to be a whimsical, organic one. Some children will freak out by this, enjoying the control scissors can bring. They need to loosen up! Also, inject some thin pieces of black construction paper because they will mimic the look of the lead in a authentic stained glass.
  
• I experimented with what I would use to adhere the tissue paper to the wax paper, since we aren't working with sticky wax. Glue would be a little too sticky and goopy, so I decided to use some watered down Matte Medium. You know me and my Matte Medium! I think decoupage glue would work just fine.
  
• After the students have laid out their tissue paper in a satisfactory design, allow them to lightly coat it with the Matte Medium. Yes, the tissue paper will move around some, it might rip too, just remind the students of the potential for creative greatness in moments like these!
• Once they've finished coating their design with Matte Medium, it's time to sandwich it with another piece of wax paper. Then its off to the ironing station.
• Please have one of the classroom helpers help your students with the ironing of their stained glass window pane. We used it on the lowest setting.
• Before your eyes, the heat will melt the Matte Medium and it will dry your tissue paper design.
• While I was preparing for this project, I cut several "frames" out of black construction paper. The students can then sandwich their project in between two of the frames, glue it together with stick glue and then use scissors to cut any excess wax paper. This way they will get a nice, neat and round stained glass window.

Enjoy!

The artwork above was created by a fourth grader.