Co-op Art Begins

I am teaching two classes of homeschool art again this year. (Fourth and fifth/sixth.) The first week of co-op we started two projects involving "hands." This week we finished them up. Both projects were found at artprojectsforkids.org . Check http://www.artprojectsforkids.org/2011/08/my-hand-collage.html and http://www.artprojectsforkids.org/2010/11/warhol-hand-prints.html for details of these projects.

The first project combined collage with watercolor painting. We copied our hands on paper, cut roughly around them, then quickly glued color blocks cut from magazine pages onto the back of the hand outline. Then we flipped the collage and cut out the hand. They looked neat this way, but the watercolor part of this project made them look ever better.

Each child got a watercolor paper. We talked about different papers, weights of paper and "tooth" (roughness) of papers. Each child chose a warm (orange, red, yellow) color crayon and peeled the paper off of it. We used the bumpy side of the paper and they laid the bare crayon flat on it and colored across the whole paper. Then we glued the hand in the center of the paper. After a quick demonstration on watercolor technique (wash, pigment, fade) the kids painted a darker band of a cool color (blue, green purple) around the hand and added more water to fade the color out toward the edges of the page.

Some kids got the whole page background pretty dark, so we did a reverse technique by soaking up the paint close to the hand with a sponge.

The other hand project involved watercoloring and a bit of simple printing. We folded 12 x 18 sheets of paper into fourths and then unfolded them. Each quarter was painted a different color. After they dried, we set up a print station and made hand prints using two colors of washable paint.

This project gave us a chance to talk about famous artist Andy Wharhol, whose work was in our city these last few months. We talked about commercial and pop art and printmaking.
Soup art by Andy Warhol.