mixed media stories - week 4

   These kids are awesome, I love working with them. They are so focused and 'on it'.
   Today most of them finished up their 'scenes' from last week, painting them with gouache. (A couple here are still in-progress.)
  

The next assignment is to purely play around with the paint - watercolor and gouache - creating textures and fields of color, experimenting with puddles, drips, runs, bleeds, taking their paper out in the rain, just filling the page with color with no specific imagery or story in mind. Next week they will 'daydream' on their painting, rotating it and looking at it in different ways, and see what pops out at them, a face, an animal, a setting, and work from there, allowing their painting and imagination to reveal a story to them...  

mixed media stories - week 3

   This week, the kids' assignment was to illustrate a story or a scene with one image. I asked them to include at least one Person (or Animal, if they preferred), Place, showing some type of setting (are they indoor, outdoor, are there buildings, trees?) and Thing (the thing could be an object, an idea, or a situation).
   We also talked about perspective, how things look when they are far away vs. close up (smaller/bigger), and drawing the things closest to you first, then filling in behind that. I asked them to visualize their composition before they drew it out, challenging them to draw straight away with pen rather than sketching it out with pencil first. Then, the kids began adding color using gouache.
   Most of these are still in progress, and I only got a few of the kids' fabulous work. I love seeing what they come up with and witnessing their process!