Friday, July 16, 2010

Kid's Art


This week I taught a couple of art classes at a small summer camp in East Palo Alto. The kids were young and the classes each day were only 40 minutes. Since the theme of the camp was Camp Safari, I showed them jungle art by Henri Rousseau. Rousseau was one of those naive artists who didn't really get his career going until he was well into his forties. He was never formally trained as an artist and had never been to a jungle, but looked at reference and talked to many people who had. He then drew and painted from his imagination.

So that is what we did for this art lesson that lasted over four days. We practiced drawing from reference on the first day - plants and insects. On day two, each artist created an environment for their bugs using only their imaginations. The technique was crayon resist. The kids drew their compositions and outlined them with black sharpie markers. They then colored their "environments" with crayons and today we painted the backgrounds with watercolor which included painting over the crayon which resisted the paint.


The students were fearless when it came to laying down the watercolor wash. And the backgrounds were beautiful! I wish I could be as bold and uninhibited when I paint!


8 comments:

Alicia Padrón said...

oh WOW Deb, I see what you mean.. these are fantastic!!! Kids.. they have the tools just right from the beginning don't they? I'ts we the adults that take all the fun and intuitive creativity out of it.

I think it's so wonderful you were teaching art to kids Deb. I would of loved to have you as a teacher. Were you able to take MacDaddy to a class with you? That would of been a hit! :o)

Alicia Padrón said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lori said...

That sounds like a blast. I love what they did with the water colors. They must have had a great teacher. ;)
I'll have to try that with Nate and Jack.

Anonymous said...

Looks like the kids had a wonderful time in their art class. What a fun way to spend some of your summer days, working with kids.

Anonymous said...

Deb thanks for sharing this fantastic art. I lo e to look at kid's art. It is so uninhibited, and unhinged in the best way. :)

kathy weller said...

that is from me, kathy, your fellow PBJ. (I'm on the ipad -- still trying to get the hang of this thing.)

Gina Perry said...

Those ARE beautiful! Sounds like a lovely way to spend a week. Children are great at showing us just how 'free' you can be with art.

where to buy oil paintings online said...

All the paintings are really very good the kids and flowers and all things looking so pretty.