Last Thursday, I gave the teen class three project options and lo' and behold, they chose to use the old photographs to tint with a booklet of Peerless watercolor.
Why is it coveted? I'm not really certain other than I love the paper book and the designs some of the colors have on them. So I was glad the teens got me over the hump of actually using and enjoying them.
I cut a small square of each color for the girls while they each picked an old landscape photograph.
I explained up front that they could not take away any color they added to the photograph. It is immediately permanent when applied. I suggested they start adding color lightly and build up as they gained confidence.
The golden age of hand-colored photography was from the early 1900's until about 1940, thanks to artist, Wallace Nutting, and his hand-colored landscape photographs. I was quite excited to share this bit of art history with the teens and they were eager to give it a try.
That is until we got started......
What looked to be easy in theory was anything but and the girls quickly had to start problem solving to figure out how best to create the desired looks they were after. And more than once I heard the statement, "I don't like this" come out of their mouths.
But to their credit, they continued forward and I am so glad that they did! Their creations are beautiful!
13 year old
This artist loved the style of the work in the end. She was so happy with her piece and I was so happy watching her admire her work. I love the soft quality the photograph takes on with the addition of color too! I mounted the work on Bristol and had the girls sign it underneath.
I have a 15 year old girl who is a bit of a perfectionist in the studio. She says her father calls it "her tick". She can focus on a project and work on the finest of details longer than any artist I know- professional and student! I am always amazed at what she finally ends up with and have accepted she will rarely finish a project at the same time as the rest of the students.
That is until she entered an advanced art class at her high school with the requirement of presenting her sketchbook with new work every week! Art class has become a great resource for her to get her homework finished each week and I could not be more thrilled to finally have more of her work to present on the blog.
(she is notorious for taking projects home to work on throughout the week and never bringing them back because she thinks they are no good)
She is her toughest critic and many times I am looking at the work thinking, "amazing", and she is loathing it. Like the work she created for this project....
15 year old
She hated it.
It serves only the purpose of being able to go in her sketchbook for marks. She has no plans for it to ever be displayed. I'm hoping her mother has other plans and suspect she will place it on the fireplace mantel to admire once the teacher has seen it.
And rightly so! Because in this particular case, the student became the teacher. I learned so much watching her fight this project.
She added copious amounts of water to the photograph, which I really did not think it could withstand.
She layered color upon color, again something I didn't think was possible.
And when I told them to start lightly with color, she cannonballed into the deep end and put the brightest, darkest colors into the work first- then somehow layering lighter colors to highlight afterwards.
And finally, she asked me for white. There is no white in watercolor, however there is with gouache. I was very upfront with her when I gave the tube of color to her that I had no idea what would happen if she added white gouache to the photograph, but she courageously gave it a try anyway.
And created a marvelous piece.
So many potential new ideas are swirling in my head now that I see you can do so much more with the photos and color!! Maybe a surrealist project where the artist actually paint in nonexistent animals, people, and things?! Oh the possibilities are endless!
I mean that starry sky she placed in this work alone just gets the gears in my head turning with endless ideas.
My hope is that after stepping away from the work for a bit of time, she looks at the artwork with fresh eyes and sees the beauty the rest of us see in the work, the beauty the first artist, rightly so, sees in her work, and wants to have it displayed.
I'm so proud of both of these pieces. I'm proud of the determination each student displayed to try something that was so different.
I'm proud of each student's perseverance as they faced and conquered the unique challenges they had to work through in this project.
And I can't wait to collect more landscape photographs so I can present this and new project ideas using this technique again and again and again.
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