After a quiet weekend, we set off to Zoe’s on Monday for another art day which I had in concept but err… not in planning 😆 Still… nothing that couldn’t be solved over tea and a few books.
We’d decided to carry on following the Usborne Treasury book from last time and try aversion of the “Starry Night” picture by Van Gogh. We started by revisiting the ‘learn a skill’ idea and spent some time remembering colours and contrasts and then working on some different blending ideas.
This seemed to work well; they used small squares of different coloured sugar paper and experimented with their own ideas on top of it.
Josie has tried really hard with these days; very proud of her.
The combined efforts of them all looked good I though – lots of creativity but also the effect of group working; one particular square by one particular girl looked very good and everyone had to have a go!
On to the iconic picture of the day.
Once we’d finished with that (and a break for some play) we came back for a quick learning session about Van Gogh and to take a look at the colours and textures in the painting. After that we gave them small squares of blue paper (this may have been a mistake, I think white would actually have been less frustrating) and got them to try a star, sky area and tree in oil pastels. (Some weird formatting thing going on there which I officially give up on)
We’d taken a look at the oil pastels (I brought a 36 set of them to give us plenty of variety) and picked out a palette of colours together that suited the painting.
They repeated the exercise in gel pens to see the different effects and which they preferred and then stuck them all together.
Final bit of the day was to test out combinations of the pens and pastels on white drawing paper and then have a go at a version of the picture of their own.
Different effects.
Trying to get the shapes right.
Very different interpretations.
Blue… blue… it’s all blue…
Maddy lets it all out.
Sisters doing it for themselves.
Maddy’s finished effort.
Josie’s finished (nearly!) effort.
Fran and Amelie finished theirs the day after.
Fran’s finished effort.
Amelie’s finished effort.
Overall this was a tougher day than the Kandinsky day but they all pushed themselves, kept at it and were rightly pleased (mine, anyway!) with the results. I do think they’ve come a long way in a very short space of time.
(Edited to add: I’ve decided to use these posts on my business blog and probably also on MuddlePuddle; I’m going to have a go at all of their efforts, including Poppy & Skye’s, on Picnik and see if i can make a framed gallery of them. )
quite envious of the art 🙂