Part 2 - Ukiyo-e Art with a Side of Katakana and Kanji

The second part of our lesson on Ukiyo-e is busy and very productive!  We start with a demo of watercolor painting techniques, then jump right into painting our drawings made the day before (See the 1st lesson here).   Here are the drawings as we start:

Our goal is to imitate the classic Ukiyo-e painting style by using bold colors and painting in "flat" washes, with little or no shading or modeling. The foreground is painted first, then the background.

While the backgrounds dry, we learn a little about the Japanese writing system, and practice writing our names in Katakana characters and the word Ukiyo-e in Kanji characters, which we add to our paintings.  The students find writing in Katakana and Kanji fun and enjoy this activity greatly.  The characters are a nice addition to the Ukiyo-e paintings.

The next step involves putting together a simple scroll on which to mount the paintings.  The scrolls are made using construction paper for the center and strips of mat board for the top and bottom supports. Construction paper triangles secure the corners of the paintings, and a piece of twine is added to the top for hanging.

Our Ukiyo-e paintings are done and the artists justifiably proud of their art.  What a wonderful job they did!

Melody

Jillian

Gretchen

I'm so glad you visited and shared in our Ukiyo-e experience.  Please leave a comment and let these students know what you thought of their work. 

Thanks,  Betsy

Ukiyo-e Art with a Side of Manga and Kanji

Bear Paw Studio is finally back in operation with an exciting art class for middle and high school age students on Japanese art, specifically Ukiyo-e, or "Pictures of the Floating World."  This is probably the most famous example of an Ukiyo-e woodblock print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, painted in 1831 by the master, Katsushika Hokusai.

Hokusai, "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" 1831

In our first 3-hour session we learn about the origins of Ukiyo-e from a slide presentation and an excellent short You-Tube video by Phil Hansen, GBAacademy.com, along with several good library books I found on this art form.  In the presentations and books, we are introduced to two famous Ukiyo-e artists, Hokusai and Hiroshige, and view examples of their work.  The connection between Ukiyo-e and Manga graphic art forms are explored a bit, and by the end of the lesson, we will learn how to write our names in Kanji.

Jillian draws a Geisha girl in preparation for painting.

Ukiyo-e designs can be found on a variety of objects.

Additional Japanese art and our class project (lower right).

To begin our Ukiyo-e paintings, we make a free-hand drawing from reference materials, trying to develop our ability to see and draw shapes instead of objects or features. To help accomplish this difficult task, we turn the reference material and our drawing paper upside-down and draw the shapes we see bottom-to-top, trying not to recognize the actual objects or features they represent.  This technique forces us to observe shapes more carefully. It is challenging, but avoids the pitfall of letting our minds short-circuit our eyes, and rely on our often faulty mental image instead of reality.

This horse drawing by Gretchen was made using the upside down technique.

Here you can see Gretchen drawing from bottom to top,
with her reference photo upside down and partially covered.

Jillian's Giesha drawing.

Jillian's second drawing is another Geisha.

Melody works on her drawing of a Geisha atop a giant Carp.

Melody's drawing.

In the next session, we will use watercolors to paint our drawings, sign our names and titles in Kanji, and mount them on a paper "scroll" for display.  

 To be continued!  Please stay tuned for the rest of the story.

Inuksuks, Ted Harrison, and More!

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

Watercolor Fun - Ready, Set, Paint!

Day 5 - Inuksuks, Ted Harrison, and Moon Birds!

Ted Harrison's art with Inuksuk

Born in England in 1926, Ted Harrison migrated to Yukon Territory, Canada where he taught middle school and painted engaging scenes of life in the far North using bright, bold colors and simple shapes.  The figure in his painting above is an Inuksuk, or Innunguaq, a cairn-like rock formation used by the Inuit peoples for communication or as a trail marker. 

We learned a little about Ted Harrison's life,

looked at a lot of his cool art,

played around a bit building our own cairns and Inuksuks,

and finally got down to some fun painting in Ted Harrison's style!  We used crayon to draw in many layers for the land and sky.

 Then we some strong warm colors in the sky and cool colors for the land.

We used sets of cake paints today, so we didn't have to mix our own colors (Yay!).

We cut an Inuksuk out of black paper to glue in the foreground of our paintings.

Then painted two more Inuksuks in the distance, getting smaller and lighter to show that they were in the middle and background.

by Melody

Our paintings all ended up very bright and beautiful!

Danielle

Gretchen

Hailey

Kaylee

Madyson

Meldoy

With the extra time we had, Danielle, Hailey, and Madyson painted some stunning birds in silhouette.

Danielle

Hailey

Madyson

I loved the beautiful flowers that Danielle and Hailey brought me on the last day as way of thanks!  Love these girls!

That's all for this art camp.  See you next time!

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.

When we had added enough detail to fill our papers, we used some mat board for backing to finish off our abstract paintings.

Danielle

Gretchen

Hailey

Kaylee

Madyson

Melody

Our colorful abstracts on the ART-line.

June 2014 Art Camp
L to R: Danielle, Kaylee, Madyson, Mrs.Bear, Medody, Hailey, Gretchen

One more day of art camp!  We will rock some colors with Ted Harrison!  Please keep turned.