complimentary colors and composition with acrylics

On Tuesday I had the kids create an acrylic painting inspired by our Monday hike in the woods. I told them to use something from their sketchbooks they created on Monday or they were welcome to pick from the reference files.

My goal was to focus on complimentary colors and composition for this project. I started by going over the importance of background, mid ground, and foreground.

Then we discussed complimentary colors and the idea of first doing an underpainting using them.

Finally I showed them a variety of landscape works by artist to emphasize it was not important to create a work realistically, but in their unique style.

Amongst the artist I presented, I showed a work of local Canadian artist Ross Penhall. One child was so moved by his work that she asked to spend time looking through the book I have of his pieces and then created this inspired by him.

10 year old

I had a couple of boys create eagle paintings. Once they were just about finished, I gave each of them a palette knife to have some fun creating the feathers.

8 year old

8 year old

As we were walking back to the studio on Monday, we stopped to look at a couple of crows. This was the inspiration for one boys' work. He was quite adamant about leaving a bit of his under painting showing around the eye of the bird.

8 year old

I think it came out really cool.

Somehow I missed the squirrel all the kids saw on the hike, but it was quite inspirational for a group of young girls. 

11 year old

In some cases the squirrels became chipmunks. Can't say I don't understand the lure of a cute chipmunk to paint.

7 year old

9 year old

And then finally this work. This is the sweetest little girl and so I was a little surprised when she said she was going to do a spider painting. Doubly surprised when she sketched out a huge, ominous spider to boot! Yet in the end, it is a painting as sweet and lovely as her personality thanks to her color choices. I love the juxtaposition of her palette against a not so pleasant subject matter for most viewers.

7 year old

But what I love most about the painting is her signature. I spend a few minutes going over the importance of signatures right before the kids sign their work. In this case, the kids had focused well over two hours on these paintings. They had worked really hard and I was really proud of each of them.

I talked to them about making their signatures apart of the work. That after spending so much time creating the pieces, the worse thing that could happen was them to throw their names on big at the bottom so the viewers focus went to something they spent less than 30 seconds on rather than what they spent the bulk of the morning creating. We talked about all the different ways they might write their name, script, just initials, just their first name, etc.

They all signed their works of art and I happened to look at the spider piece and caught my breath. She wrote her name in the web! For me, this was just so magical and I am so smitten with the final art. I think it is an absolutely brilliant piece because of each decision she made from start to finish.

To be honest, I'm smitten with all the art. I think the kids did a magnificent job on their acrylic paintings. The underpainting using complimentary color gives them a depth that belies the age of the children.

I'm quite proud of each of them.