Country Life: Works of Art.

I decided to try out an art project with the kiddies today. Faye has already 'got' the concept of collage but this is a completely new animal for Ewan.   I wanted them to enjoy using the acrylic paint first of all and see the effects that they can make on paper using this lovely medium.   I squeezed out primary colours into an old cupcake plastic container (it's a pre-formed container and very handy for art projects!). I then also put in some white (but not black, deliberately).   I wanted to see what colours they would choose and I left it entirely up to them.   The only instruction was that they keep the colours "clean" - i.e. not to blend them and to use as much paint as they liked but separate brushes for each colour.   This is a difficult concept to stick to, even for an adult! It's very quick to let it all descend into mud.

I was a bit taken aback when Ewan straight out asked for Green paint - so I decided that rather than fiddle about blending blue and yellow, I would just pour out some premixed green that I had available in my 'studio' (cough).    Faye got stuck in straight away with the golden yellow. Then left some space and chose red next, then blue and finally a bit of green. She adhered to the instructions and her paper looked very clean and bright. Ewan watched her for a bit but then became deeply absorbed painting the thick paint onto the art paper (I gave them a sheet each of heavy duty canvas type paper, specially designed to hold acrylics).   He spoke about how it looked like grass. I sprayed a bit of water into the the thick paint and onto his paper and showed him how the colour bled into the paper and how it changed colour. The more water you add to the paint, the lighter the colour goes - he was quite interested in that and continued painting his paper, covering it completely in green but using different thicknesses. I sprayed Fayes paint and showed her how the colours bleed into each other and showed her how to push the paint with the tip of the brush and also using her fingers (she used her fingers to blend the red and yellow together, she really liked doing that!).

I went away to check my emails and clean up a bit, as well as put a wash on my painting that I'm doing in my ...er studio. Came back and Ewan had started scratching into the paint with his paintbrush and also the end of the koki pen to make 'grass' ... what?! This is Sgraffito technique, he hasn't been taught this at school, I'm sure. Anyway, I was quitely surprised at that. He has a natural desire to make the surface interesting and isn't hesitant. We sprinkled salt into the paint and then also put some bubble wrap onto the paint.   The whole purpose of the exercise, as far as I was concerned, was to make an interesting background. I wasn't really worried about the collage.

I went away again to check my erm art in the garage ... er studio ... came back and Ewan had taken red paint and painted a small amount onto the bubble wrap and let it seep through onto his background, so he had made just a little bit of contrast there. He didn't go overboard, as most children would do and dollop tons of paint on ... just a little bit to make a highlight. No-one told him to do that, he didn't ask for any other colours. My word, I think the boy is a natural artist!

We then had a lot of fun assembling things to put onto the backgrounds once they were dry. Faye cut out part of a tree from a photo I'd printed. We made sun shapes and butterflies and tissue flowers. They each coloured their own butterflies in - Faye's had to be pink and smaller than the big ones we used for Ewan's painting.   Ewan wanted peoples in his picture, as well as a bunny and a carrot. So Faye cut out her photo taken at the funfair of her on the jumping cords and this is the people in his painting. I made the flower out of tissue paper in Ewan's painting but he coloured in the flower stalk, leaves and glued it to the flower. Faye made smaller tissue flowers and only painted the centre in yellow - to look like Daisies, Nana.
All in all I think this was a very successful little art project, I'm very pleased with the end results.