painting pears

A few years ago, I found this exercise on Pinterest.

I actually had a preteen student create an artwork using the instructions back then too. She had a great time making the work and I put the project on file for later use.

Well this December did I ever put it to use! Every single class and age group did a project inspired by this exercise.

And it was a successful project regardless of age too.

Each child started by creating a painting exercise using red, yellow and brown.

Then using what they learned in the exercise and picking what they liked best of their discoveries during it, each student created one larger painting. My goal was to give them the opportunity to explore value and brushstroke to create interest in their work.

 

This part of the project filled the entire hour and a half class. The following week when the students came back, they began again with their exercise paper and applied colors of their choice over the underpainting.

8 year old

Then again looking over their exercise sheet, made choices of what they wanted to carry forward on their final work of art. 

9 year old

And what stunning works of art they were too! These two large canvases were created by elementary students.

8 year old wip

The above elementary student finished his work but something about it wasn't just right to him at the end of class. I told him to go ahead and take it home, live it awhile and if he still felt the same way the next week to come early to the studio and redo what he didn't like. 

The great part of this was that he had already learned that adding another layer of color was no big deal and before his classmates arrived had created a work of art that he was happy with in the end.  (If you are curious, you can see the silk mounted on frame in the background for the new silk painting project they were about to start)

8 year old finished work

The pre-teen class worked on a smaller canvas. Why different size canvases for different classes? Because I had a lot of leftover canvases sitting around the studio that I decided to use up. They were solely picked based on me having the correct amount of one size for the correct amount of students enrolled in the class.

Again the artist could choose whatever color combination they wanted and apply the skills they learned during the warm up exercise on the small paper.

10 year old

11 year old

11 year old

11 year old

And the teen class completed these works using a square piece of acrylic paper.

And because I was on a roll with pear projects, the fun carried over into the drawing class too! Here are a couple of the drawings I captured on film.

10 year old

9  year old

Lots was learned about the importance of value and brushstroke. Lots of beautiful pieces of art! And lots of very proud and happy kids of all ages. I'll put that down as a win.