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 The Great Wave off Kanagawa is one in a series of woodcuts entitled, Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. Mount Fuji is the highest mountain in Japan. Mt. Fuji can be seen from many angles in this series and in this piece of art, it is placed in the far distance. It almost looks like another wave. It stands quietly and observes the power of the great wave as it crashes into three tiny boats filled with fishermen. This painting is so popular it has influenced not only other artists but it's printed on clothes, turned into tattoos and it's even an emoji! Go ahead, check 😬😂🌊 The Picassos heard all about Japan back when Hokusai (the artist) was alive... Tokyo wasn't called Tokyo then, it was called Edo, and you couldn't buy paint in a store you made it and colours were limited. This artist also used a method of woodblock printing to create his art. They learnt all about that before they got down to drawing and painting our Great Wave interpretation. Talk about a fun lesson full of cultural immersion!   Nugget and Fang is a funny little story about friendships, stereotypes and starting school. The book is also beautifully illustrated so it on top of hearing a terrific story the Doodlebugs got to jump right in to making some wonderfully messy art! They made some painted papers today which we will use to make our Nugget and Fang characters for our collage. While they made these papers we explored texture and we also explored colour! They also created their lovely watercolour undersea backgounds. On our second day they pieced everything together and the result is absolutely fangtabulous! 😬   This morning our inspiration painting is Van Gogh's Wheat Field with Crows and my little campers are using good old play dough, yup you read it right, play dough, to create this masterpiece! They smooshed (is that a word LOL) and smeared the colours onto our background and we layered them to create the basic placement. Then they went to town making little strokes and dashes to mimic Van Gogh's signature brushstrokes! I figured this would be a neat way to get those little hands to achieve the Van Gogh effect! The result is so striking it's hard to believe kids between the ages of 3 to 6 created them! LOOOOVE!   Today we looked at another one of Van Gogh's works of art... Olive Trees with Yellow Sky and Sun. The expressiveness of his brushstrokes and his use of colour just makes it sooooo beautiful! We took a cue from him and painted our own gorgeous Poui Tree and gave it the Van Gogh effect! Check my little campers out as they get into painting these trees. This was such an enjoyable experience... the kids really got into their paintings and the room was actually quiet! GASP!   Much has been said about Van Gogh's painting of his chair. It is lauded by art critics as a powerful statement by the artist on his own mental and emotional state. His chair is personalized by the placement of his personal belongings the pipe and the pouch of tobacco. His name offset to the back of the painting also leaves the viewer feeling like Van Gogh feels removed from his work and alone. Today the Picassos recreated this piece but in a very different way! They were challenged to create a floor and back wall to set their chair against. The chairs were made out of clay and painted to make this a 3D piece. Each child designed their own floor and wall so this project is one that I thoroughly enjoyed seeing them bring to life.   I just can't get enough of Van Gogh's sunflowers!! Can you tell?? LOL. Today the campers are sculpting mini clay dishes and they will paint them in our next session! These little dishes can be used for rings or other trinkets... I know my campers had no shortage of ideas for what they would put in them 😆 The studio was filled the buzz of happy chaos and clay-stained palms... just the way I like it! 
Today my older campers looked at the gloriousness that is Van Gogh's Starry Night and we then re-imagined it in our context. We brought Starry Night to the POS Waterfront using Van Gogh's characteristic colours and his brushstrokes but with our local scenery. Take a look!   My little campers are jumping right in and re-creating Van Gogh's Starry Night! We're doing it collage style so there are lots of parts and layers to this masterpiece but that just means those little hands were super busy all morning! They painted, cut paper, used chalk pastels to add texture and they glued... Boy oh boy did they glue 🙈 Then tada! Masterpiece complete!   Of course one of Van Gogh's most famous paintings is his Sunflowers and we recreated it with a bit of our very own flair! The campers created a textured background and learned how to make the vase look roundish... They really focused on making those characteristic Van Gogh styled brush stokes. Then they used clay to make the different sunflowers and leaves. I think it's important for children to see that there are sooooo many ways to make art and literally anything goes!  |
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Be a fly on the wall in our art room! Take a look at what we do, how we do it and the smiles that I get to see week after week :) Archives
February 2020
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