Watered Down Art Club



This was the model... my daughter did this one for me.

Notice the scarecrow? And the heart?

I love the hay bales!



This is the one with a stump and ferns. And a very angry scarecrow.

This is one of my Kindergardener's work. Notice that everything has to be at the bottom of the page, and there is a sun in the top corner?

 

     Just when you think you have things figured out... kids can ensure that you need to think again.

     Our project today was based on Monet's "Haystack" series, using crayons and oil pastels and then watercolors for a "crayon resist" technique. I showed them several print outs of some of Monet's work, all showing haystacks. We talked about haystacks, that we could make them shaped a little differently (Monet's kind of look like houses), and that we could have more than 2... I don't think I encouraged the inclusion of scarecrows, squirrels, hearts, or houses. Okay, it's art, it's their work and their ideas, it's all good. So I have them using colors I specifically chose for the project - yellows, oranges, browns - for the haystacks (and other items). "Where's the green?" one child asks. "Well, that's not a color I want you to use in the haystacks" I reply. (Because we are going to use green next anyway). I tell them we are really focusing on fall colors, to which these kids argue that green is a fall color. "Look outside" they tell me. Well, they ARE right, it IS still pretty green outside. I promise that we will get to green in a bit.

     We get to add trees and shrubs using the greens. "I would like you to draw them along the middle of the paper", I tell them, showing my example. I saw trees in every spot possible... along the bottom, only along the sides, growing off the top of the page, and even where I asked them to draw them in. I also got blackberry bushes, an apple tree, and ferns. And a stump. With mushrooms.

     And then we got all wet. The idea was the kids would use their brushes to brush water along the bottom, to which I would add droppers of brown, red, and orange, allowing the colors to spread out before using their brushes to meld the colors. I didn't put that much water on the tables... we were using metal cupcake trays half filled with water. Suddenly, we had puddles on every piece of art. Some before I ever added the drops of paint. So kids did what evidently is the natural response to this problem - they held up their papers and let all of the water and paint run off and onto the floor. "Let's try and keep the water on the paper and the tables; I don't think I need to have to clean the floor, okay?"  I mean, how do you prepare for that? I guess I am prepared for it in the future.

     But we weren't done yet. We still had the sky to complete, which was going to be similar to the other colors, but only with the one color. And we had to clean out the water left in the tins because it was mostly brown. Which was a new opportunity to get more water onto the sodden papers.

     They came out pretty good this time. Even with the squirrels and houses and stumps with mushrooms. They were amazed at how the oily crayons resisted the watercolor paint. Even though I had promised that they would do exactly that. It was also the wettest watercoloring I have ever done.

     The placemats we fingerprinted last week had been laminated over the weekend (thank heavens for a local Lakeshore store that has do it yourself laminating), and several of the kids were reluctant to "get their placemats wet" or "dirty".  I tried to point out that they had plastic on them to prevent exactly that issue, but again, they didn't believe me, I guess. I had one kid who really could not grasp the idea that we could work on the placemat all term. He really wanted to take it home, and tried several times to do exactly that.

     And let's get back to class size. This class was supposed to limited to 20 children. I was given a new and updated class list, upon which I have 26 student names. 2 names are brand new. Which also means they have no placemats. Which I will have to make and laminate. And I will have to re count all of the prepared supplies. The good news? Today I was missing 8 kids who were sick, since there is something going around. So I had 19 artists. I also had my 17 year old daughter who really is an artist helping me out. She had two things to say afterwards, "yeah, they don't really listen, do they?" and "now I understand why you are so tired after teaching".  We both just laughed.

     Yep.

     The really important thing to take away from this experience is that the kids are having fun, learning new ways to make some arts and crafts, and hopefully learning ways not to do things. The artwork looks decent, considering that they don't have a great artist leading them. But their creativity abounds and they seem to be proud of their work.

     Looking forward to using straws to blow black watercolor on paper next week. I'm sure nothing could go wrong there...