Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Session II Kickoff - Picasso's People and Watercolor Mania!

Yesterday was the first of four Art Lessons for my second session! With 9 students, I am almost at my max. Therefore. I enlisted Mikelle's assistance as Teachers Aid. However, despite having 9 students in my kitchen, they were awesome artists and great kids.

I had to be a little creative with the projects because two of my students had been in my classes before, so I didn't want them to repeat any projects. 

At the same time, I wanted the new students to be able to experience some of those great projects. 

Another way I had to be creative was an age difference. I had 2 students that were on the young end and beginners, and two that were 12 years old and more advanced. Thank goodness Mikelle was there! Sure, Chris and I agreed to pay her 3 bucks for her assistance with the right "attitude", but it was well worth it. 

I also ran into a typical flaky art teacher right-brained pitfall: You get excited about the projects and plan out the projects themselves, but forget to make sure you have enough watercolor paper for all the students to do them! Oops! But that situation has now been rectified for tomorrow!

"Picasso's People"
We began with a look at how Pablo Picasso would create people with his unique arrangement of geometric designs.  The above are just two examples out of many! I love the first one in blue, but it's hard to find a year iot was done by Picasso or the name of the piece. I'm only able to find it through this source. Maybe it's still part of the Sakip Sabanci Museum in Instanbul, but I doubt it because the link indicates it was a traveling exhibition. But I digress. 

The project was to use Watercolor Pencils and create their own funky portrait, using Picasso's style as inspiration.








Watercolor Mania
Watercolor Pencils are great because they first act as standard colored pencils, but then when you wet the drawing with water and a small brush - it "activates" color like watercolor paint.

After this, the direction that students went depended on their experience level and/or if they had been in any of my sessions before. I had my two young beginners work on the same "sea painting" exercise with salt and masking fluid that I did just last week!


It was then the lack of watercolor paper supply was realized, so these beginners worked on a "Watercolor Discovery" and a warm color desert on smaller thick cardstock. Here are one of the completed Watercolor Discoveries. Their other completed works will be shown in the next entry for tomorrow's class, and they're still "in progress".


As for my other students, they really liked the Watercolor Discoveries and Warm Color Desert paintings too. However,  a couple students may have to wait to start their desert tomorrow.

Another Completed Warm Color Desert Watercolor!

"Watercolor Discovery" In Progress

"Watercolor Discovery" In Progress

"Watercolor Discovery" In Progress

Warm Color Desert Watercolor In Progress

Watercolor Discovery

Watercolor Discovery

Watercolor Discovery

Watercolor Discovery
Since I wanted to make sure I had the larger sheets of watercolor paper available (and we ran out during this class), I had the students use the smaller, but thick white cardstock to do some experimental watercolors with salts or other techniques. 


 And here's a preview to what is to come! Using Masking fluid to help "fence off" the fence area, and then implementing some of the Watercolor Discovery techniques for the sky, a "collage" technique is then used to add a tree in the foreground. Regular brown colored pencil is used to add the texture lines on the tree.



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