Mixed Media Non-Objective Paintings

Last summer KAEA Summer Camp went virtual due to Covid- we'd never done a virtual workshop before but it was awesome! Avery Kasper agreed to lead us in a workshop on Mixed Media Non Objective Painting. She is not only an amazing artist, she is a great teacher and already has experience teaching in an online school as well as in her brick and mortar school building. Everyone really enjoyed the process!

Avery had us start with some drawing and mark making

before moving to painting and more drawing. We were encouraged to layer and use whatever media we wanted.

In progress- we made a smaller work on watercolor paper to warm up before moving to a larger canvas.

I had so much fun making these paintings and have made a few more since. My 2 year old promptly claimed the painting and it now hangs over his bed!

Speed Painting

I like to do a speed painting challenge with my intro high school students when we introduce painting to encourage them to mix colors, blend paint, and loosen up! This year I put together a video for the KAEA virtual fall conference to explain and demonstrate the concept.

Here are the "rules"

• Use only primary colors + black and white
• No pencils or drawing before painting
• No washing your brush- blend!
• Fill the entire page
• Move quickly before the paint dries

Here are some of last year's student speed paintings. I always grab a bag of ornamental gourds and sometimes some fruit for observation.

A student works on a speed painting

A student's painting on the left and one of my examples on the right. These were similar gourds but mine had green on the bottom.

I used some deceased butterflies I found as examples in my videos but students were happy to stick with gourds for their challenge. Maybe next year advanced students can do a more challenging subject!

3rd grade Landacapes

One of my demos for 3rd grade before Covid-19 was about landscapes. We first watched the PBS Bob Ross Remix because I knew some of the kids liked Bob Ross and because I really appreciate some of his ideas like "this is your world, you're the creator, find freedom on the canvas."

I also just love the video. My husband seriously played the song for me a few times when I was in labor with my 3rd kid! I find it very relaxing. Students do too, high school students still ask me if we can listen to after I play it for them when we talk landscapes!

Next we looked at photos of landscapes and talked about foreground, middle ground, and background, the horizon line, and the element of space. Students who decided to make a landscape (I think all of them did) spent the rest of the first class period sketching out their ideas in pencil.

In the second class period, I demonstrated procedures for watercolor paint and for liquid tempera. We talked about the differences between the two mediums and then the students chose which they wanted to use. Most preferred tempera, but probably 1/3rd chose watercolor. 

Most students spent about 3 class periods on their landscapes, some longer. In the 3rd class, I talked about how to tell if your work is finished and showed how you can add other media like oil pastels or colored pencils on top of paintings if you want.

I really enjoyed seeing what students chose to put in their landscapes. A few represented a real place they had been but most chose to use their imaginations and to make a place they would like to visit.

Gouache Flowers

Gouache lilacs painted for my mom's birthday

A few months ago I got the urge to paint with gouache. I hadn't used the paint since my 2D design class at ESU in 2005 but I remembered enjoying how quickly it dried along with the ability to use it opaquely or in translucent layers.

I decided to use part of a Blick gift coupon to invest in a nice set of true gouache (instead of acrylic gouache) and I’ve been very happy with the Utrecht designer gouache I bought. The colors that come in the set are not your typical primary and secondary colors so you've got to understand how to mix them to get the colors you want.

The biggest benefit for me is that I can pull them out when I have a little bit of time to paint in between chasing my kids and get something done without making a huge mess!

I got on a floral kick after painting the lilacs for my mom’s birthday. I am now accepting commissions for 5x7 gouache flowers for $25. Email Catharine.Morris@yahoo.com if you would like to order an original painting or are interested in one pictured here!

Painting: Trying to Loosen Up

Once upon a time, I stopped painting. Frustrated that I couldn’t get my paintings to look “right” (read: real), I stepped away for a while. 

Most of the artwork to which I’d been exposed was a realistic style so in my mind that was the kind of art that was good. When I was given the opportunity to learn and see more of art history and realize that there are lots of different styles I was able to loosen up and come back to painting. 

This is my 5th year in my current teaching position and I have observed the majority of students working on paintings being very tight trying to force a realistic style. The students also struggled to work with acrylic quickly enough and ended up frustrated with trying to blend dried paint. One of my goals for introducing painting this year was to encourage them to loosen up, move more quickly, and understand their options for different styles and approaches. 

With watercolor we tackled landscapes. I gave students the option of following along with me in a guided painting or working on their own landscape. I wanted them to have a basic understanding of landscapes without spending weeks on an acrylic painting like has been the tradition. We used wet on wet and other techniques to get the main composition laid out the first day then the 2nd was spent on adding layers for definition and texture. I asked the students to only make a few lines with pencil for a guide before starting opposed to drawing every little detail and talked about embracing the nature of watercolor- water likes to stick to other water!

Before the students started on their 16x20 canvas paintings, we did a couple of exercises with opaque paint. First, we did a one class period “speed painting” challenge. I brought in a variety of miniature gourds with different colors and textures and students each chose one to observe and paint. Here are the rules- use only primary colors plus white and black. No pencils or drawing before painting. No washing your brush. I did about a 2 minute demo mixing paint directly on my paper and using my brush handle to make marks with a Sgraffito technique. While the students were hesitant at first they relaxed and had fun with it after a few minutes, besides a few that I’m still trying to help break free of perfectionism.

The 2nd exercise was a simple technique sampler. Students folded their paper into quarters and made tiny paintings with different techniques in each section: palette knife, dabbing, scraping (using a piece of mat board), and sgraffito. 

When the time came for students to begin their final paintings they had learned some new techniques to have at their disposal. I gave the themes of “object” and “shoes” as starting points but some branches off in different directions.

I feel like intentionally practicing techniques for loosening up, in addition to introducing different styles of art in the art genres unit made a big difference in the students’ confidence and willingness to try new approaches. 

These paintings were created by a couple of freshmen boys who were not very comfortable with painting before.

A few students decided to paint candy still lifes. I pulled in Wayne Thiebaud when they were trying to figure out what to do with their shadows.

Not many takers on watercolor, but the couple that used it did a nice job.

This is the wall in our front office where I can display 10 16x20 inch paintings.

Do you find that your beginning students are stressed about realism? How do you help them to loosen up?

PreK Lilacs

One time I read an article that was about how to teach a child to draw. Rather than follow step by step directions which teach one way to draw one thing, you spend some time activating their thinking by talking about what you notice in the thing you are observing. It was an awesome article and I hope I can find it again someday. That is the process we used for these PreK lilac watercolor paintings. The students and I talked about what we noticed in the lilacs and then they painted, first the stem, then the flowers. For simplicity's sake since we were nearing the end of the school year and had one day to finish the paintings, I gave each student just a purple and a green prang watercolor well instead of a whole set of paints.

We use ice cream buckets or coffee containers for cleaning brushes when painting. They are much less likely to spill than smaller cups and they are big enough that I can pretty much get by with putting one in the center of each table for students to share.

Here are the finished paintings from my PreK artists!

First Day of School Collaborative Artwork

Here is the large mural displayed above some lockers.

I teach in a really small school where everyone pretty much already knows everyone so instead of a getting to know you activity, I like to start the year with some type of collaborative project. This helps us get some artwork up in the blank hallways quickly, gives the students a chance to interact and helps establish a positive classroom culture. Do you have lots of students switching classes in the first couple days of school? This helps with that issue as well. There were no abandoned projects because of students changing classes.

Here's my room before I moved tables to hold the in-progress murals.

Our StuCo picked "Nobody rides this ship. We all row. We're all in." for a theme for the year so I drew the biggest “mural” out ahead of time based on that saying and had it stretched across 3 tables in the art room. Each class painted and we finished it before the end of the day. The students planned the colors and added more details as they worked. When it became clear that it would be finished before my last class came in, I grabbed some more butcher paper and sketched out another table sized mural. We ended up making a couple more that the students designed and I sketched out under their direction to make it quicker. Next year I may have the students work in groups to completely design and create murals I just did not expect them to finish so quickly this year so I adapted!
We used tempera sticks to sketch and outline details as well as add highlights on top of tempera paint. We’ve gotten so many positive comments on the paintings and I was even asked to send a picture for the district newsletter. This may become our first day of school tradition!