Day 1 of Contemporary Art Series Camp: Chuck Close Fingerprint Paintings

Chuck Close is one of my favorite Contemporary artists! I wanted to be able to show the summer session 2 kids artworks that varied in medium and technique so what better way to showcase these skills than by using Chuck Close's fingerprint portraits. My original idea was to have students create self-portraits of themselves and then using black ink, go back over different areas of their face using their fingerprints. Though, I think I was thinking way too big for a group of 4 - 8 year olds who all have completely different skill sets. So, instead, we opted to do more of an abstracted image of a flower and vase. 

Before we began the art lesson, I introduced the students to the artist of the day. I exclaimed to them who Chuck Close was and what kind of art he did. The kids seemed to enjoy looking at his finger print portraits. In fact, most couldn't even tell that it was a painting because it looked so much like a photograph! This is when we started talking about photo realism and how photo illusions come into play from this type of art style. The students even seemed to enjoy that the artist was still living and still creating artwork, despite his disability. To even help students remember this artist, I explained to them how Chuck Close created works that were very large in size so he would have to sit in front of his paintings and *CLOSELY* paint his artworks. Chuck Close painted CLOSE up. :-) 

The kids were excited to paint in the vase of flowers using simple colors. It was really easy for them to start this process since the shapes were very much abstracted and simple enough for them to paint in. 

Next, we gave the students a variety of colors and demonstrated how to appropriately dip in their pointer fingers into the paint and *DAB* their fingers all throughout their painting. This process was interesting to watch because you could tell which students were the more neat and meticulous ones and who were the messier ones. The boys seemed to be the more messy, in this case. Some students chose to create their fingerprint marks in a very fast manner using a lot of paint to the point where their fingerprints were hard to see. In these instances, we had to come over and demonstrate to them how to dip their fingers. 

Once we were done with our masterpieces, we examined our works. I explained to the students how the flower vase was hard to see up close because the fingerprints cast an unusual illusion up close. However, once students backed up from their works they could see a hint of the flower vase! This is what photo realism is all about. 

All in all, it was a good day to study Chuck Close!

Claude Monet's "Lily Pads"

Ever had a bad day in art class and realize that the project you thought would turn out beautiful and would go exactly as planned just ended up being the total opposite and really brought you down for the rest of the day? Yeah, that's me. Right now.

Like the Henri Matisse project from yesterday, I was also reluctant to start on a project that was very trite and... a little boring. I've seen hundreds of Lily Pads projects inspired by Monet and they all look the same! Especially in the summer internship position I took on this year, I know for a fact that kids had done this same project once (or maybe even twice before). So, I had to think of a lesson plan that would still be able to get the kids excited about the project, but also learn about Claude Monet. I wanted to find a lesson that would be able to use the same techniques found in his works (layering colors, using cool colors with a hint of warm colors to evoke a sense of light and reflections, and also being able to show movement, for example), but refraining from using paint. Don't get me wrong- I love paints, I love painting, and I love teaching painting classes! But, after yesterday's sorta disastrous painting lesson in which us teachers found ourselves cleaning up paintings in order to make them "look more beautiful", I was ready to let the kids experiment with techniques and to not rely on paints. However, it didn't look like that would happen....

In this lesson plan I had created for the day, students would be using tissue paper to collage different layers on top of each other to create the water lilies on top of the water. Pretty simple and most importantly, something that the students would all be able to work on due to the fact that they know how to cut (or strip off) pieces of tissue paper and glue them on a board. Well, it didn't look like that would be happening for the kids today.

I had sent the head teacher these lesson plans a week before classes started and so, she did have ample time to review everything first before we started the lessons. However, the day before she had mentioned to me that she was scared the Monet lesson would look too much like our earlier Homer piece because students would be using collage materials. Well, of course I noticed this similarity before hand but I had devised this lesson plan for a reason.

The head teacher has worked with many of these same students, either in her pre-k classes during the school year or in the after school program she has been teaching through this same summer art camp series. I knew for a fact that she had done a Monet-inspired piece with the students because I have seen pictures of them on social media. That's why I chose to do a collage piece inspired by this artist...to avoid any overlapping. However, she felt like we had to change the lesson plan because so many of the kids in this summer art camp class had also taken classes with her. I swallowed my words and agreed to do it her way because, not only is she my boss, but she does understand the importance of our clientele. We wanted to make the parents happy and in awe of the variety of works we had created in summer art camp, after all!

After I did the art history lesson with the students, it was time to bring out the bristol paper and oil pastels. Students were restricted to blues, yellows, pinks, and a brown. No dark colors allowed in this lily pad painting! Next, the head teacher began the lesson as usual. With an already drawn out depiction of a bridge over water using white pastels, kids began following her directions and filling in the appropriate colors. However, after about 2 steps in, she instructed me that I could continue a different Monet-inspired lesson with 2 kiddos in the class since they had already done this same exact artwork with the teacher in their after school classes.

Well, the tissue paper was nowhere to be found, folks. And, frankly, I was on a time crunch and had to just improvise.

The two students both had blank sheets of bristol paper. I saw some construction paper on one table and pastels on the other. My mind worked quick as I decided that me and my two students would be doing a close-up depiction of the lily pads instead of doing the usual bridge drawing that the head teacher was doing with the other 16 kids. Oh yeah, keep in mind I am working at one table with 2 other students who are attempting to follow directions from the head teacher as I instruct my 2 students to follow my directions. It was crazy, y'all!!!!

I began drawing large semicircles on the paper for the 2 students. These would be the lily pads. They totally look like lily pads, I thought. I instructed the kids (1 who was 5 and the other who was 4) to fill in their 5-6 lily pads using brown, green, and pink. "It's okay to color over each color using a new one!" I kept telling them as I awkwardly grinned and pretended to know WHAT I was doing. Next, it was time to add color in the background! AKA, in the areas that were left white. I handed the students a blue crayon and told them to color in this large area, making sure that there weren't any white that was showing through. After about one minute, literally ONE minute, the kids were ready for the next step. I had to step back and look at their works and try to figure out how I could make them look more Impressionist-inspired....especially more Monet-inspired. That's when I found the holy construction paper. Oh man. If it wasn't for that beloved construction paper... I don't know what I would've done.

I'm starting to learn how tiny the attention spans of children are everyday in art camps. Because of this, I knew I had to keep the kids involved with their Monet works as much as possible. Thank goodness Impressionists like to layer on colors on top of each other!

So, I instructed the kids to keep on layer lime greens, soft pinks, and dark blues on their "water areas" (the "non-lily pad areas", as I called them). As they were occupied with this task, I cut up the brown, pink, yellow, and green pieces of construction paper into circles that would layer over the students' already drawn out lily pads. Contrast, I thought.

After each different sized circle was cut out from the construction paper, the kids got to glue them on top of their lily pads. This whole entire process took about 45 minutes. All while other things were happening in the classroom. I'm proud of my 2 kiddos for following my directions and paying attention to me instead of their fellow students and their different works. But, I wish I had been able to think of other ways to re-create this work in a manner that looked less boring and more vivacious...like the Impressionists had done themselves!

All in all, I wasn't as impressed with the way I taught this lesson plan. :-(

4 down, 1 more to go!

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!