Gustav Klimt's "The Tree of Life"

After yesterday's successful project, I was eager to start on this new one. The original lesson plan I laid out for the teachers involved using metallic and gold markers on black paper with the kids drawing out the tree of life but the head teacher proposed a different approach, since we had an abundance of kids from different age ranges who lacked certain art skills. 

As soon as the head teacher brought out the canvases and acrylic paint I thought to myself, "uh oh...". I just envisioned paint getting everywhere, the canvases turning out messy, and kids using too much color and shapes in their trees.

Before kids got to camp, the head teacher and I drew out the trees on the canvases first with pencils. We both thought that it may be too hard for a lot of the students to draw out the swirls of the branches on their own. Next, we handed out the canvases to the students and instructed them to CAREFULLY paint in the tree (branches and all) with the dark brown paint. I thought that a lot of the students may have a hard time with this step since it required a lot of precision but, the kids proved me wrong....again! Many of the students took their time to fill in all of the branches and to paint in the trunk. There was even a student who was doing interesting mark making with her brush:

Our next step was to add in the orange (or gold, as a lot of kids remembered from the artist slideshow earlier in the day). This gold served as a background for the tree and would make it pop out even more, as I explained to the kids. This, by far, was the most challenging part for the students and if I could, I would go back and change up this step. 

Since there were small areas in between the branches that needed the gold, a lot of kids had a hard time precisely painting in the gold and to refrain from getting it all over the branches. Looking back, starting off this painting with a gold background first may be the one huge alteration I would make to this lesson. Though, luckily, my two other teachers helped the students who were struggling to paint in the smaller (harder) areas. 

After, we filled in the ground by using blue paint. This was easy for everyone in the classroom since that particular area was big enough for the students to fill in with paint. 

After we had every inch of our canvas filled in with color, the final (and most enjoyable) step was to go back into the tree using reds, yellows, whites, and greens to paint different shapes and forms inside the areas. During this step, I referred back to Klimt's artworks on the projector to give students inspiration for the shapes that they may want to do. This step was hard because many of the students wanted to fill in every inch of the tree with some sort of shape or they wanted to completely go over the brown with other colors. 

After an hour, which was about how long I predicted the lesson would take, I had to stop the project and just take the canvases away. It wasn't because the kids were being bad and not handling the materials properly, but they were getting soooo into it, that it got to a point where everyone in the class was over-working their projects and going overboard with the paint. Not to self: once the colors on the canvas turn muddy (and especially when and if the art doesn't call for muddy colors) end the project.

Overall, the end result with this project turned out fabulous. Even though,we had to use black paint and outline everything in the painting to clean them up a bit, I was happy with the overall results. In fact, the head teacher was so pleased with the final product, she decided to use the lesson in her next curriculum project for the kids during a new session. 

2 lessons down, 3 more to go!