Painting and drawing I—from traditional to modern

We started art camp off this summer with a trip back in time to visit ancient art, medieval arts and then moved onto the renaissance period and finally to more modern art in America. We started by looking at Egyptian and Greek pots then painting a story on a clay pot in only 1-2 colors. It is a bit of a challenge to limit the palette that much but they made it! 

We moved on to the medieval period and discussed lettering in bibles and important documents and how they were decorated by the scribes with scenes or items relevant to the person. We used wood blocks given to me by the HOTT tole painters group that we had primed in gold for the campers.

Our last project was a fabric painting of an ancient Indian elephant with a lot of gold trim. Because I wanted them to concentrate on drawing the details on the elephant and painting it, the pattern was on their fabric. 


2nd day we moved on to looking at and discussing impressionists, well known artists and pointillism. We started with a tape resist and did a finger painted Monet bridge in his garden. Some of them were not very comfortable with the finger painting only tapping but in the end most did pretty well. the magic was when we pulled the tape off. the oooh and aaahs!  
I pulled out a variety of cloth bags for them to chose from and we talked about Van Gough and his sunflowers. Everyone then got to draw and paint their bags. 

 Kat got to teach the last project today on pointillism using examples from Seurat. I had a variety of wood pieces and we had several different size items for them to dot with.

Our final day started with a Georgia O'Keefe type watercolor. We looked at a number of her paintings both of flowers and of other scenery. We drew the set of morning glories then did wet painting of them. Finally all the kids got how to add paint into the water on the paper and help it move instead of just painting  with the watery paints. Lots of oooh and aaahs on this too. We did a bit of salting at the end too. 

Kat got to lead the Chagall circus scene with the camp and probably got the kids to draw more intricate figures than ever. Yes there were monkeys hanging by their tails too.  The scenes were very detailed. We did colored pencils to complete this one.

Lastly we used an unknown artist as an example and did a very different technique with them. It is a tree with lights in it on a moonlight background. We used the four colors without cleaning our foam brush--scary to not wash your brush!! We then drew the tree in with lots of branches and did dot on dot for our lights. It was really quick and they did a fantastic job. Always goes too fast.

many more pictures at Painting and drawing I

Modern art camp lets us Paint, Paint, Paint

we spent a bit of time each day talking about the various artists --when they lived, what made their art be considered "Modern." We started the week with Jackson Pollack and his sidewalk creations. The campers first drew and painted bright geometric shapes then we dribbled paints over the entire canvas. Great results!

 We looked at a Nicolas LeBeuan-Benic nature print then did a tracing of the tree onto rice paper. The campers then painted the branches. The hardest part was convincing them to leave the branch tips in colored pencil. We sponged on multiple colors for the leaves using ball pouncers. We followed his design with reddish sunlight accenting the painting. Last step was to frame it with matting and a bit of accent. 

Drawing and chalk pastels are a hit with this group. I love the vibrant color even though they are a bit messy. We looked at Picasso faces and other faces then drew a self-portrait in either Picasso style or realistic. We then used the chalk pastels to paint our pictures blending with our fingers. These are sealed with cheap hair spray which sets the chalks well.

We talked about Chagall and his paintings of scenes from places he had been and liked that were a little more than life then drew our impression of his circus. We ran out of time to do the coloration on this one but the drawings were superb! 

We finished our day off doing modern designs on a reusable bag. I love having something useful to carry the projects home in. We reviewed a number of geometric and other "modern" designs then set out to draw and paint our own. I saw peace signs, swirls, electric penguins and lots more.

I was excited to find another way to do tie dyeing a few weeks ago that eliminates the need for a microwave oven. we prepared cotton socks in the usual way then using very watery acrylic paints we saturated our socks and created wonderfully bright socks and t's. They are a bit stiff when first dried but after a wash and a bit of fabric softener they will be fantastic. video is at: tie dye socks  tie dye socks 2

We ended the week with 2 drawing and painting projects. First we looked at pictures of Georgia O'Keeffe's gigantic flowers and western scenes. Campers picked which artworks to paint with the red landscape, large flowers and giant shells being selected. They painted on over-sized blue cardstock and the results were fantastic and not caught on film. 
Our final project was a Paul Cézanne watercolor of a bridge in the woods. Even though the kids have painted with watercolors before it is hard to convince them to not over pigment their projects. Lots of them got demonstrations on how to remove the extra paint and get the lighter airier look. Cannot believe how well they draw and paint!