Bee Painting and Story

"It's a bee with a black stinger and he's giving me a lot of honey so we will never have to go to the store."

"I'm putting my arms out so the honey doesn't get on top of me. I don't want my bow to get dirty. You know why the bee is dropping honey on my arms? Because he thinks my dress is very pretty."

"The honey has pretend wings. The bee took off the real wings and put pretend wings on."

It is delightful to listen to a story unfold verbally as well as visually. Here is the finished painting.

Mixing Colors - Exploring Fluidity and Smoothness of Paint

This young artist begins with a palette of warm colors mixed in another class. He enjoys scooping the paints and moving colors to another tray.

Here he is fascinated by the drips of white on the dark pink and red - good contrast.

He finds another palette, a greater variety of colors moves to painting with a brush. Smooth strokes across the page with some additional mixing of colors on the paper as they touch.

Then returns to his scooping and dripping technique, this time over the ground painted. The white drips make nice contrast over his colors.

A final image shows Mom's painting as she works across from him. She explores those warm colors as she creates her round shape, using shading and color variations to suggest a sherical form. At the same time, she is sharing his exploration of the material - modeling discoveries about color, smoothness of paint and rounded brush strokes.

Each is deeply engaged in his and her own process; perhaps his mom's image even grounds and the young artist as he works. They are sharing the painting experience as they work across from each other and share materials. Mom's painting also allows her just the right amount of attention, focused on her own process, yet able to be aware and interested in her son's creation.

Dots and Dabs - Color Mixing Exploration

This young artist began with distinct dots of colors on her paper.

She experimented with adding additional dabs of color on top of the dots and using the brush to mix. Here she adds a dab of dark green to each color.

With layers of dabbing and mixing, the colors grow more and more similar.

Sharing color mixing discoveries with another artist.

After noting the similarity between the dots on her sweater and the dots in her painting, she added an in between color to surround the dots like the brown on her sweater.

Painting in Relation to a Partner

This collaboration began with two artists working across from each other and sharing a palette of cool blues and purples.

They decided to try using the same color each time in their paintings.

As they continued, each added lines that began to weave together and entwine. Each pattern was different but the color choices were synchronized.

Other artists in the studio came by to see how they progressed. Warm colors are added as they move to use additional colors.

The working process of the two paintings.

The finished paintings hung together in the studio, along with questions for the viewer, "Do you think these paintings were done by the same artist?" "What do you notice that is different about them?"

3D Design, Drawing, Building, Painting

Working on themes of architecture, drawing and building and 3D design, this artist began with building a structure out of blocks. (Thank you to the Corley's for their wood scraps:)

Above she draws a diagram of her structure to help remember it, also great practice representing relationships among the different overlapping pieces and mapping space by drawing.

She begins to reassemble, adding glue to hold pieces in place.

The final stage begins with painting - using liquid watercolor which seeps in like stain combined with tempera paint which behaves more like paint, drying on top of the wood.

The finished house - notice how the color choices highlight significant shapes and angles in the overall design.

Printing Mom's Painting

In the family studio, mother and son painted on walls adjacent to each other, each engaged in his or her own process. Here is the collaboration that unfolded when the young artist became interested in adding to his mother's image. This is mom's painting when her son first took interest.

Here, the young artist begins to add to his mother's painting - she shared that she had an intention to add a son and he helped her carry out that plan. Notice his reach to add to the paper.

With much additional painting and over-painting the paper was starting to get really wet. Standing back we see how thick the paint has become.

Mother and son chose to further their collaboration by creating small prints off the main painting. The printing process changes the texture of the main piece as well as creating new works of art in the small monoprints pulled from its surface. Three prints hang with the image while a fourth, featuring part of the sun is hung below.

Clay Bricks

This young artist was particularly intrigued to arrive one week and find that the clay was cut into rectangular prism shapes. They reminded her of bricks.

Here she uses a stick to smooth "mortar" on a brick.

Using one piece of clay to scrape off "mortar" to spread on a brick.

Here are a variety of objects built from the bricks. A bed in the lower right corner. This was a theme this young artist returned to in her clay work for several weeks, even requesting help making the clay square when she came in to find it in balls.