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.

Louise Nevelson: Found Object Sculpture

I am a big fan of American sculptor Louise Nevelson. She appeals to my love of symmetry and found object sculpture. She is well known for assembling "crates" grouped together to form a new creation, then painted in a uniform color to unite the objects.

"When you put together things that other people have thrown out, you’re really bringing them to life – a spiritual life that surpasses the life for which they were originally created."--Nevelson

As is my custom, I've been mulling over a Nevelson project for quite sometime now. I found an interesting take on the project here, but I had my own ideas to take the project to another level, to appeal to my older students.

I have six children, so broken toys, mismatched legos, naked dolls and bits of junk abound. So what I did was, with my kids, go through all of their toy bins. We pulled out stuff they no longer played with, multiples, etc. etc. This was a good way to clean up their stuff, so I totally killed two birds with one stone.

And now I had a collection of things for our sculpture. I wish I had a pic of the sculpture that was created with a doll head that I sawed in two, but it came out completely blurry and the student took it home. Boo hoo. It turned out fab, though. And the doll heads cut in half were big ticket items the day we spent assembling sculptures, to be sure.

Heads up: This was a project that I had to extend into two class sessions. There is too much to do in one class period, even with classroom helpers.

• Acquire some sturdy cardboard as the base for your sculpture. I used the backing from all of my Canson Value Artist pads because I had so many laying around. They worked out perfectly. Of course you can used regular old cardboard and cut it down to the size you wanted to work with. We worked with a 9 X 12 piece.
• Arrange your classroom so you have three working stations: one to assemble, one to glue with hot glue gun and the third for painting. This will make life easier for you because there are always students who rush through their work, and others who are very meticulous.
  
• The fun part: after showing students examples of Nevelson's work, they got to dig into my found object/toy graveyard piles and pick out objects they wanted to work with. Break up the squabbles over the coveted doll heads and airplane parts.
• Encourage students to explore different arrangements just as Nevelson did.
• Then its off to the hot glue gun table. Yes, it might be a little time consuming and I usually melt off half of my fingertips, the end result is much neater and more sturdy compared to basic white glue.
• This is the point where I end the first part of the project. Now I get to lug home all of these sculptures. Yay!
• To prepare for day #2, you will need some white primer. Any primer will do. Students will need to paint a coat of primer over their sculptures so that the paint will adhere to the toys/buttons/dominos/matchbox cars, etc. I also mixed up my own shade of charcoal gray. I believe matte looks best.
  
• On day #2, let students go to town priming their sculptures. The challenge is to get into all the little nooks and crannies of the toys. Primer dries fairly quickly, but if you want to speed along the process, break out with the hair dryer.
• After the primer coat is dry, they need to paint using the charcoal grey color. I choose this color so it would look similar to Nevelson's pieces. Several of the students asked why they couldn't use blue or red...so feel free to use whatever color you want. Use the hair dryer again.
  
• IMHO, the charcoal grey made the sculptures look very dynamic.
  
• At our open house at the end of the semester, these sculptures were one of the most eye-catching displays.
  

The sculpture above was created by a third grader. As you can see, he couldn't quite get the paint into the thread spools and lego nooks. Still looks cool, though!

Joan Miró : Assemblage

Joan Miró is one of my all-time favorite artists. Wait. I say every artist is my all-time fave, don't I? LOL But this abstract artist from Spain really is. I love his carefree, child-like style, his colors. They just make you feel good looking at it. I've long wanted to interpret Miró 's abstract style, and this project was alot of fun. I incorporated an assemblage technique, just to give the students something tactile to work with.

• Make sure to bring some of Miró's artwork to show to the students, so they can get a better idea of Miró and his abstract style. This is such an important step in teaching modern art. Its hard to understand and/or visualize the concepts so being able to look at each artist's work is imperative.
• Hand out 9 X 12 sheets of watercolor paper and make sure each student has a palette with 2-3 different watercolors.
• It's important that the student use a large watercolor brush, to give the background an appearance of washed color, as Miró did.
• Encourage them to blend their watercolors nicely because this is the first layer that we will be creating our assemblage on.
• Once they are finished painting, bring out the trusty hairdryer so the projects can be done within the hour. No one likes to watch paint dry!
• Once it is dry, encourage students to draw abstract shapes with oil pastels. They can also cut interesting shapes out of scrapbooking paper.
• Once students have laid out their abstract design, they can add their final touch, which really brings a graphic punch to the project.
• Black yarn! Of course, students could have used a black oil pastel or a black Sharpie, but I though using a spool of black yarn would be fun!
• Each student created designs with a bottle of elmer's glue (just supervise them carefully or they will get glue happy and create a mess!), then carefully placed their black yarn on top of it, snipping off the end with a pair of scissors.

The artwork above was created was a third grader.