Mimicking the Masters- Jackson Pollock

Oh no she didn't.

Oh yes I did! 

Decided to attempt Jackson Pollock in the dead of winter with an energetic bunch!

Am I crazy?

More than likely yes.

To do this I made six stations.

Station #1 they painted the corner of a board and did straight lines where ever they felt like.

Station #2 was a marble roll. They painted 2 marbles and let them roll around like a pin ball machine all over their canvas which was placed in a shoe box. Unfortunately there is no picture of this....sigh.

Stations #3 & #4 were a combined effort. One got to use a medicine dropper to sling or drip really watered down paint while the other got to use a stick to sling or drip paint. These are both methods that Pollock used except instead of a medicine dropper he used a turkey baster. One of the many things he stole from his kitchen to sling paint.

Station #5 was guarded by me at all times. Kids got to paint a hand mixer no it will not be taking up residence in my kitchen it is specifically for art purposes only. Their canvas was laid in the bottom of a large box and when they were ready they plugged in the mixer, held it down in the box, closed the lids as much as possible and called Fire in the hole! To which they would turn on the mixer and sling paint.

Station #6 which sadly there is no picture of..... I took a cardboard shoe box that had preciously held boots and put rubberbands around the top and bottom with the lid open of course. This made a guitar like instrument. The kids put their canvas in the box under the rubber bands, painted the rubber bands, closed the lid slightly and used their fingers or a stick to pull the rubber bands and let them sling the paint on the canvas.

After doing one round of the stations they let their paintings sit by the heater for a bit while we tried to watch a short documentary which can be viewed here about Pollock until technology failed me and my computer refused to unfreeze. Story of my life.

After a snack and stalling while our paintings dried a bit we did one more round in the stations and called these masterpieces complete!

Mimicking the Masters- Piet Mondrian

To kick off my afternoon class which focused on famous artworks from the 20th century, we studied Piet Mondrian. After viewing lots of his artwork (and seeing his influence on pop culture with the Partridge Family bus) the kids set to work drawing a minimum of 4 vertical lines, 4 horizontal lines, and 3-5 partial lines either direction, first with a pencil then just beside their lead line they drew another line this time with sharpie. This left double lines that they'd later paint in.

Then in true Mondrian fashion we painted with only primary colors.

Lastly they made their black lines thinker with paint, filling in those gaps we left earlier.

Several of them said that this was a lot harder than it looked!