Summer camp week one!

 For the summer I go from 5 part time part time jobs ( yes five:1. private lessons,2. before school care, 3.after school care,4. subbing 6 districts and 5.working weekends at the Memorial art gallery teaching and coordinating plus 6 if you count the etsy shops) to one full time position. I am the Art day School Coordinator for the  Memorial Art gallery's Creative workshop. Last week I got to be a teacher for week one. I conducted a lesson called "BIG Paintings". We worked on three mural projects, one large poster size painting, and made several large paintings on paper.

I used a PDF file from a art teachers blog called "Art Projects For Kids" I downloaded the PDF file"Ode  to Matisse" and printed it out twice one on card stock and once on copy paper. I had 12 students in each class so this 24 piece project had just the right number of pieces. Each student got one 8x10 inch piece to paint. I let student pick there own colors then they had to talk to the other people whose pieces touched theirs to make sure to same shapes had the same colors. It forced them to talk to one another and work together.We used acrylic paints to paint these.The second copy students used at the end of the week and colored it in with oil pastels.

We looked at images of Matisse drawing, his painting, his stained glass designs and cut outs in book and on the internet.

We worked with tempera and acrylic paints. We also touched about different types and brushes different painting mediums and what they all do. We used foam brushes, foam rollers, fan brushes, mop brushes, liner brush, flay and round brushes.I demonstrated each brush and told them how to use each one and why each brush was called that. I also talked about mixing colors and getting to right amount of water on your brush proper rinsing and watching out for your neighbors while painting. After the demo I let them loose on large paper 18" x 24" paper and encouraged them to make abstract paintings with tempera. I brought in some examples of my own abstract paintings to hang up and we went to the gallery and looked at the several examples there.


Here are some examples of students work.

I  put up large paper on the bulletin board walls in the classroom and traced each students body with a pencil onto the large paper. I was trying to make students bodies over lap so the the image would like like they posed for one big class photograph.Students painted in their bodies and their clothing.We did a one day lesson on facial proportion and how to draw facial features correctly and to scale as well as hair then student s could start painting in their faces.

Here's a section of the seniors wall mural (students ages 9-13)

In addition to the murals students created their own paintings where they traced their arms. For seniors I gave the kids their "homework" of choosing their favorite belongings and making them arranged all over the floor like they just spread all their favorite things out on the floor and were grabbing for them.

Here are some examples

For juniors we did a variation of this were students traced their arms and then use layers and acrylic and gel medium to put their arms in an environment that they like grass and swimming in water.

We also experimented with using sand as texture medium.