New artwork, new banner

I decided to make a new banner for Modern Art 4 Kids. You could say I sort of have a prejudice against computer-generated art. Sure, Photoshop and Illustrator and all those programs are fine and dandy and yes, it takes a great deal of skill and talent to create magic with them but....there is something to be said about art that you make with your hands.

I always encourage my children to draw instead of just making something up on the computer. I feel if they cultivate their drawing skills, then it will only add to their technical skill on the computer.

I was working with some paper the other night and so I decided to make my own Modern Art 4 Kids banner out of cut paper--a collage. It was fun. I love that you can still get the tactile sense of the paper cut and glued onto paper. This is what happens when you buy a huge box of scrapbooking squares on clearance at Michael's for $5.99. Yay, me! It's been screaming at me to open it.

The original artwork is fairly small, around 8 X 11. I wanted to make it small enough to fit on my scanner. So, what do you think of it?

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!

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.

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.