The weather is been fantastically good, so in order to give an art lesson outdoors to the kids and enjoy the sunshine, I have taken them outside in the school playground/pound area for painting.
By dipping a paintbrush in the water pound, and mixing it with soil, you can create beautiful earthy shades, pretty much the same principle as watercolour.
By breaking grass and smudge it on paper you can make a shade of green, and by using a burned wood stick you can create some chalky black. Using only these natural pigmentations from nature you can create 100% organic art on recycled paper.
I have made two organic sketches, one that I prepared at home in my back garden and another one I used for a quick demonstration how it works for the kids.
Here are some of the results:
Age 9
Age9
Age9
Age 10
For more school art lessons check out my blog at Life of a Mother Artist
More to come…
Angela,
That sounds like a terrific approach with the kids even from a purely art education perspective, not to mention the environmental awareness that comes into it through materials as well as subject. Your teaching method for observational drawing that you show on your blog was also very inventive. Who are the lucky kids you’re working with? Is your daughter in the class?
As someone with a near-obsession for trees, I love your tree sketches!
Angela,
How brilliant to introduce the environment to children as magical paint rather than as dirt not to get on their clothing.
I also appreciate that you let the kids paint a teddy bear, as shown on your website. I learned that people paint best what they really love from looking at the pictures of a local artist with incredible technique of painting realistically. Everyone loves her pictures of her daughter. In contrast, her pictures of athletes, a nude or our Michigan governor annoyed me because I felt they did not capture some essential spirit.
The greens won’t last, but what the heck. Inspiration is more important that light-fastness. And the photos of the greens will last.
The harmony of these natural colors is something special.
Thanks everyone for commenting, I have been away from the blog business for a while and is very good to be back with you all.
Steve, I have been working with my daughter’s primary school, and doing art workshops with all sorts of kids. This particular one outdoors is also helpful to know that is the school’s resource base class for children with special needs (communication and language difficulties) but as you see very much artistically expressive!
Birgit I am very much for green awareness so hope to do more things like this one. I walk around the school with a bag of toys for the kids to draw and that seems so successful!
Karl yes I think the nature tonalities are stunning on paper! And the whole think is bio-degradable, but sometimes working with these kids is very much about the process, the therapy, outweighs the finish product.
Soon I’ll post more stuff x
[restored]
Angela,
I know in the past I have given you a (sort of) hard time. I felt (somewhat) bad about that. I just try to be honest. Landscapes using dirt, grass-stains, etc.: BEAUTIFUL.
Does anybody know why my comments have been banned with my original email?
Thanks everyone for commenting, I have been away from the blog business for a while and is very good to be back with you all.
Steve, I have been working with my daughter’s primary school, and doing art workshops with all sorts of kids. This particular one outdoors is also helpful to know that is the school’s resource base class for children with special needs (communication and language difficulties) but as you see very much artistically expressive!
Birgit I am very much for green awareness so hope to do more things like this one. I walk around the school with a bag of toys for the kids to draw and that seems so successful!
Karl yes I think the nature tonalities are stunning on paper! And the whole think is bio-degradable, but sometimes working with these kids is very much about the process, the therapy, outweighs the finish product.
D thank you! Don’t want to be rude but can you remind me of yourself a bit better?
Please anybody sort out my email comments!!!!!!!!
Soon I’ll post more stuff x
Angela,
Sorry about the comment problem! Your comments were blocked by the automated spam detector Akismet, which runs on most WordPress blogs. It attempts to identify spam by words and other features associated with it. Sometimes artificial intelligence is not so intelligent (or maybe it was teasing you). I don’t know what set it off, but I unspammed all of your comments that were caught. Hopefully that will teach it that your email, etc. is OK, so that it won’t block those in future. (I then put most of the tests and duplicates in moderation, so they wouldn’t show here.)
So please comment next time as you normally would, and if there are still problems I’ll try teaching Akismet again. Meanwhile, very clever of you to have thought of trying a different email!
I saw an interesting post on Capacities for imaginative learning about an effort in New York to “define and advance core principles of aesthetic education in public schools.” I was wondering if, as a teacher, you are given any guidelines for your courses, or come up with it all yourself. Your methods are very inventive, and would seem to relate very well to most of the goals listed (PDF here):
Angela:
I like your approach. Puts me in mind of a French author – Victor Hugo maybe? – who would paint watercolors with coffee. Creating the image of a tree with the stuff of trees must give the students plenty of Aha! moments.
Steve:
Thanks for sharing that post. The Lincoln Center Institute is news to me. The list of objectives is laudable but looks like committee work. Just off the top of my head it seems that the list addresses the awareness of one’s surroundings, of one’s self and one’s social environment. Simplifying can be hard, but I wonder if these nine objectives could be pared down to six.