betsybear-artist: Paul Klee Abstracts with Kids

Kid's Art Camp - June 9 - 13, 2014

Watercolor Fun - Ready, Set, Paint!

Day 4 - Paul Klee Abstracts

Today was all about abstract painting, with a look at Paul Klee's beautiful and varied abstracts. We saw how he used straight lines, squiggley lines, dots, cirlces, and many shapes and colors to create interesting compositions. This is today's sample abstract done in Klee's style.

Klee style abstract

To make our abstracts, we started with a white crayon and filled our watercolor paper full of all kinds of lines and shapes. We liked Klee's quote: "A line is a dot that went for a walk," and made our own dots take long walks with plenty of interesting twists and turns along the way.

Using strong colors, we started painting over the paper and crayon in big, wet, washes, which the white crayon resisted, of course. Then we began the work of adding many details--dots, lines, shapes, etc. to accentuate and embellish the white designs we had made with crayon.

Adding more . . .

. . . . and more . . .

. . . and more fine detail.

We spattered paint here and there to add some flourish.

We learned to apply lighter or harder pressure to our brush to make lines thinner or thicker, and to hold our brushes perpendicular to the paper in order to get in those tight spots better.