Painting Flags....

I've started my painting workshops for the summer and so far I've been amazed at the talented artists I've seen! I'm doing three painting classes per week, each one 2-1/2 hours. Students complete a painting in acrylics on a 16 x 20 canvas during the class. I give instruction and provide a demo as we paint together. We also learn about different elements and principles of art, art styles and basic painting techniques. Last week we painted Folk Art Houses, Peacocks and American Flags. This is the first painting lesson I've done on American Flags and I thought they turned out so cute! These paintings were all done by 1st-4th graders.

Starting out looking at a flag and talking about how many stripes and stars. We also talked about different painting styles. Then we sketched out our design with black paint.

Time to add our color.

We talked about proportion and scale to decide how large to make the blue part.

We did have a little drying time before we applied the white. It was so hot outside all we had to do was sit their canvases out in the sun while we took a bathroom break.

The tricky part of the whole painting was lining up the stars correctly.

Some students cut out a star stamp from cardboard and stamped over their dots.

Some decided just to go with the dots for a more impressionistic feel.

God Bless America!

I was inspired to do a few flag paintings myself while preparing for this lesson. Here's what I came up with. I decided to try out several different styles.

8 x 10 Oil on canvas board.

 

8 x 10 acrylic on canvas board 

8 x 10 oil on stretched canvas

This was my favorite. 8 x 10 oil on canvas board