Art Class: Pointillism, Value, and Collagraph Plates

One thing my kids asked for more of this year is art. I decided that motivation is always a good thing and so I invited another family to join us every other week for art. We had our first art class of the school year today. This group of 10 children ranges in age from Joseph, my 6th grader, down to a toddler and does not include Tobias (9mos) or Makayla (15yrs). Makayla does her own art separately. 

How We Plan

We set up the class so that each time we meet the kids complete 1 art piece to take home. They also make progress on 1-2 more art projects that take more than one session to create. For example if something needs paint to dry before moving on to another step. I have several art books with ideas in them, information about artists, etc. However the majority of our art class is coming from the Deep Space Sparkle Membership Club. We invested in a 1 year membership and so far it is amazing! This reopens enrollment tomorrow for a short time only so be sure to check it out if you are curious. I'm not affiliated with them, just a satisfied customer! And if you have any questions just ask in the comments.

Today's Art Class

Today we learned about Georges Seurat, looked at one of his paintings, measured out how large it actually was, and talked about pointillism - dot painting.

The kids used oil pastels to draw a picture without very many details. Then they used q-tips and tempera paint to fill in their pictures with dots.

Our second project will take two class periods. It is a jellyfish project. They began by painting the background today. The idea was to focus on value - starting with white and gradually increasing color to the darkest. Children chose a plate that only had 3 paint colors to work with, either white, blue, and black or white, red, and purple.

They painted white, then white with a bit of color, then more color, then added a bit of dark paint to the color, then mostly dark paint. 

The last step today was splattering thinned white paint to create bubbles. Next time we meet they will do chalk pastel jellyfish over the painted background.

The 3rd art project they began is a printmaking project. Children first pulled apart a bouquet of real flowers and passed it around to study flower shapes.

Then they made a collagraph plate by cutting foam sheets and gluing them onto cardboard. Those are drying now. Next time we meet they will paint the foam with a paintbrush and then stamp their flower onto paper. A baby wipe will clean the paint off the foam so they can add new colors and stamp again as many times as they want on their landscape paper.

It was a great first art class!