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.

Art Camp Day 3 - Perspective and Passion

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

Watercolor Fun - Ready, Set, Paint!

Day 3 - Perspective & Passions

Jumping Feet First into ART!

We started with a brainstorming session of things we are passionate about and came up with a diverse list that included math, camping, exercise, gymnastics, flowers, and art, among other things.  We were going to be jumping into our passions feet first with this art lesson!

Putting things into perspective . . . one-point perspective, that is. . . was the lesson today, though we also worked on drawing faces.  We used a Coyote and Roadrunner cartoon to start our discussion about vanishing points, horizons, relative size, and creating the illusion of distance on a flat surface.   Coyote was a great teacher for this concept!

We started by drawing our faces using some carefully placed lines to correctly position our eyes, noses, and mouths.  

We traced over our pencil lines in marker and cut the faces out to use later. 

Of course, we had to have a little fun first!

Danielle

Gretchen

Hailey

Kaylee

Madison

Melody

Next came drawing the feet and hands, which was done with help from friends to trace around both our hands and feet.  

We glued our faces between our hands, then worked on drawing in our bodies, making sure we made them proportionally smaller than our feet and hands so we would appear to be jumping, feet first!

We finished by adding some background drawings that related to our individual passions . . . fishing poles, flowers, tents, math equations, roasting marshmallows, paint brushes. . .  with some added splatters and flourishes of paint here and there for good measure.

Our next lesson is to learn a bit about abstract impressionist Paul Klee and create our own abstract masterpieces in his style.  I hope you will join us again!