Kid's Recycle Art Workshop

This week I just finished holding an amazing Recycled Art Workshop. And when I say amazing, I don't mean my workshop, but I'm referring to the amazing creative kids that attended. Using all "trash" and a little inspiration, they took the info I presented to them and ran with it. I was really amazed at the unique creativity of each piece of art.

Here's project one of three.  Thanks to Pinterest, I found this great idea for Recycled Picasso Portraits by United Art & Education. Just click the previous link and they have a wonderful tutorial to follow.

Using "trash" like cardboard boxes, phone book pages, paper and fabric scraps, old magazines, discarded buttons, and paper bags, along with some basic art supplies like glue, scissors, construction paper and oil pastels, students created these amazing portraits. 

I can't tell you how much they enjoyed coloring on the cardboard with the oil pastels! If you ever want to entertain a child, give them something textured to color on :)

Click Photo for details

Love these Crayola Oil Pastels for classes!

I also encouraged them to use a warm/cool color combo for the back ground verses the foreground.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

Painting Monet

Here's the last set of paintings from the Copy Cat Workshop. If you have missed the other three paintings completed in this series, click HERE to see the first post in this series.

While the subject matter seemed simple, this proved to be the hardest in the series, because of the soft subtle tone and Monet's painting style.

To find some great books for teaching kids about Monet, click the above photo.

These were painted in acrylic on an 11 x 14 hardboard canvas.

We worked a little on these each day, for four days at 2-1/2 hour sessions.

The ages of the kids in this workshop ranged from 8-12.

Click on the above photo to see books that can help you learn Monet's techniques.

Painting Mondrain

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Learn more about great abstract artists, including Mondrian in this book-click picture for more info.

Painting Piet Mondrian was my favorite lessons of our Copy Cat Painting Workshop. I loved the way these turned out, and would have loved to have been able to keep each and every one of them to hang in my studio. While this looked like an easy project, it proved to be very challenging, even for the more advanced students.

Our main lesson from copying Mondrian's art was composition, and of course, abstract art and primary colors. We looked at several paintings by Piet Mondrian, and then students were allowed to design their own painting using what they learned about composition.

We used a straight edge to draw our lines in pencil first, then painted in our colors. The colors were limited to primary colors, plus white, and black for the lines.

Because we were pressed for time, we did have to assist with the black lines. I still don't know what would be the best way for painting the lines, short of letting each line dry before painting another one. The black paint smeared all over the rest of the painting. We had to do a lot of touch up and use a lot of wipes to fix smudges.

The designs were created 100% by the kids, as well as color painting and placement. All we did was help paint some of the black lines and fix smudges.

These were painted in acrylic on a 12 x 12 stretched canvas.

Click here for kid friendly facts on Piet Mondrian.

Painting Pablo Picasso

Looking for kid friendly books on great artists, click picture above for information.

If you missed the first in the Copy Cat Workshop series from last week, click here to see our Van Gogh paintings. 

This painting, "Asleep"(1932) by Pablo Picasso looked like it would be a simple one to copy, but it turned out to be very challenging. It was another great exercise in using "lines", and painting what you see, instead of what you think you see. It also helped the students practice looking at negative and positive space. This is, of course, is a great example of abstract art.

These were painted in acrylics on a 12 x 12 stretched canvas.

For kid friendly facts on Picasso, check out this website.

Check out this site when teaching kids about famous artists!

Vincent Van Gogh

Looking for books on Van Gogh? Click picture above for details.

To see where you can order these kid friendly books on Van Gogh, click on any of the pictures above.

If you missed last week's post, I highlighted a "Copy Cat" painting workshop where students spent four days copying the works of four famous artists. Students spent a total of around 3-4 total hours copying one of Vincent Van Gogh's famous sunflower paintings. These paintings were done on a 16 x 20 stretched canvas in acrylic paints with acrylic gel medium added for extra texture. 

For a great site for artists biographies for kids, click here.

After sketching out the basic drawing with watered down, yellow acrylic paint, students blocked in colors with their first layer of paint and this was allowed to dry. During the layout stage, students focused on Van Gogh's composition and flower placement, positive/negative space and lines. We encouraged students to sketch and paint what they actually "see", not what they "think" they see. 

Students were reminded to look at the picture before each brush stroke. In the second and third layers of paint, acrylic gel medium was added to the paint to help build texture and show brush work--in an effort to mimic oil paints. Besides the art principals mentioned above, this project was great for teaching value, mixing paints and developing painting techniques, especially brush work.

These students were between the ages of 7-12, and the majority of them have taken art classes for two or more years. I think for this age group, the hardest part was focusing on the same thing for such a long period of time. I really challenged them to work in sections and perfect the details. As you can see, for such a young group, they really took my encouragement to heart. I was amazed at their results!