Workshop: Poetic Images Through Painting and Collage

EXPLORING AND OBSERVING THE MEDIUM:

Make sure your paint set-up has:  one paint palette (with primary colors plus black and white), two containers of water, two sponges on a tray for four children to use.  Have brushes of different sizes in a separate can set up for children to use.  These can be set in the front of the classroom for children to have easy access to.  Demonstrate very thoroughly the painting process: dip, paint, wash, wipe, press (on spnge).  Learning how to use the paint set up is the most important part of the painting process.  Children are natural born painters!  Once the skill of brush cleaning is learned and the paint set up is presented in a consistent manner, you can tackle specific projects and themes.  A bucket kept in front of the classroom with a little water in it can be used for the children to deposit their brushes into at the end of class.

Help students discover how to use the primary colors to create secondary colors.  What happens when blue "meets" yellow?

What happens when we add white to our colors?  When we add black? (the creation of tints and shades)

Demonstrate how to use a paintbrush and how to manipulate it to create different marks.  Can we discover different marks and textures using objects other than paintbrushes? (sponges, cardboard tubes, craft sticks, combs?)  How many different kinds of marks can you make with a brush?  A brush can slide, jump, stipple, swirl and twirl, go around, next to, on top of another color.

Oil pastel
(Cray-pas):

How are they different from crayons?

Whathappens when we press hard? What happens when we press lightly?

Can we make different marks by holding the oil pastel in different ways?

Can we combine oil crayon colors to create new colors?