Welcome to Term Two!
The themes for this weeks class was PROCESS ART and COLLABORATION.
The classes were very busy with numerous activities happening outside. Thankfully Tuesday was a glorious Autumn day, unfortunately Thursday was rainy and cold. The weather made the classes quite different yet they both had lots of wonderful moments and it was great to give the children one last class incorporating some play in back garden before we move indoors for winter. Its amazing how rain sometimes doesn't dampen things for kids yet actually makes things more exciting as they could not only get messy yet wet as well!
I will separate this weeks classes into a few posts so this post doesn't go on forever (I once said I was going to make them shorter, they are definitely getting longer.....).
Today's post is about Process Art and Splatter/Drip Painting.
I'm a big fan of Process Art, that is art where the end product is not the principal focus. Process art is about enjoying the creative journey or process of making art rather than having a planned outcome. Process Art is particularly important for children as as it allows them to explore, feel free to invent, create and find new ways to do things. Mary Ann Kohl is one of the world's leading experts on Process Art and has written many childrens art books. In her article Art vs Craft she states "when children create art, they are exploring, discovering, and thinking. Art encourages a child's originality and unique expression with an unknown outcome. Crafts, on the other hand, involve the child's reproducing an adult's idea, while following directions to make a specific "thing" - a known outcome. Art is creative and free, with only some very basic techniques to guide the experience; the process is heavily valued, and the finished product is not the main goal; It is the creative process that holds the most value".
Jackson Pollock was an influential American painter. He was our artist of the week a few months ago. His style is sometimes referred to as action painting as he was so active when splattering and dripping paint onto his enormous paintings. I love this video by MoMA of his painting technique. I would have shown the children yet we didn't have time. Splatter painting is a great way to experience process art.
Materials:
- Canvas paper or canvas board (the paper needs to be thick to absorb all the paint that is added. I changed to canvas boards for the second class as the canvas paper blew away in the wind, even when we tried taping it down).
- Watered down paints (I used tempura and poster paint yet any paint would work)
- Lots of different sized paintbrushes, splatter trays and pipettes
You can see from the photo I set up with a large sheet of plastic on the lawn and then put the paints at either end. We all wore old clothes so we didn't need to worry about the paint going everywhere. Then just let them go to it - splatter, drip and flick paint at their canvas. Lots of fun!
We hung up our canvas paper on Tuesday to dry and it started to look more like a drip painting...pretty though. The children said it looked like a rainbow.
Here are some of the Thursday class canvas boards. The paint is still wet so they won't dry nearly as vibrant.
Posts on our other class activities this week
Cheers Fiona
No comments:
Post a Comment