water based marker monoprints

These lovely monoprints were created during a warm up activity to an acrylic landscape painting project in the teen class.

A warm up exercise!

Created with the humblest of art supplies, Crayola markers and a piece of acetate.

Each teen had picked a reference photo they were considering using for the acrylic painting. They put this photograph under the acetate and then drew the elements they were thinking of including in their painting onto the acetate with the markers.

We had talked a lot about how artist are always making decisions about what to put in and take out of their paintings. What to simplify, what the focus should be and how to move things around to create an interesting composition.

This quick exercise gave each of them a chance to begin making some of those decisions without getting bogged down in getting things "just right" in a sketch.

As they were drawing with the markers onto the plastic, and any old plastic will do for this project, there was some concern that it wasn't working as the ink just kind of balled up on the surface. It was hard to convince the artist that it was OK the marker wasn't covering the surface as expected but since it was a warm up exercise there wasn't too much stressing and they continued forward.

I then gave them a piece of damp paper and they turned their ink drawing face down onto the paper and rubbed.

When they pulled the acetate up, they were all pleasantly surprised with the results.

I was too.

I thought they were so stunning that I matted all of them for the teens to take home.

acrylic paintings inspired by Monet

On the second day of the Art and Nature summer camp, my plan was to have the campers go through their sketchbooks and pick one of their sketches from our hike through Lynn Canyon and use it to create an acrylic painting.

I decided to show them the work of Monet to inspire the painting style for their work of art for a couple of reasons.

One, there is an exhibition of his work currently on display at Vancouver Art Gallery and I thought it might be a nice entry point to encourage them to go and have a look at it.

And two, Monet loved to paint outdoors.

The match of Monet's style of painting and the artist work seemed like a perfect match. It was also a perfect day to be outside and so I asked the children if they would enjoy painting in my backyard instead of in the studio.....

since Monet liked to paint in his backyard.

A resounding YES meant we taped the acrylic paper down on the cardboard I save from old paper tablets, grabbed the paintbrushes and water jugs and the box of paint and headed outside.

Now let's be clear. My backyard doesn't hold a candle to Monet's yard.

Although I have a goldfish pond, mine is in a container and definitely does not have a bridge.

I do have a small water fountain though.

And while a couple of artist decided to create paintings of the woods,

10 year old

6 year old

Most of them were quite inspired by my small water feature in the backyard.

They patiently waited to catch a glimpse of the three goldfish I have put in the pond and these fish made an appearance in several of the paintings.

11 year old

If you look closely, you'll see the white fish with the orange marking on it's head peaking out from this young boys' painted lily pad. Pretty much exactly what the fish does when you are looking for it in the pond.

10 year old

You'll also see the two orange fish along with a great rendition of the bamboo fountain in this boys' painting too!

6 year old

And then this endearing painting, where it seems my fish when night falls enjoys some flying acrobatics! This young artist had me at flying fish with this painting.

And then the waterlily paintings. I need to stress again that "my plan" was to have the kids paint forest scenes from their sketchbooks in my backyard. I had shown them Monet's work to inspire painting style along with hopefully exciting them to go take a look at his artwork in person.

NOT to paint waterlily scenes and yet something magical happened with the combination of my humble pond and looking at Monet's artwork.

11 year old

Because suddenly these beautiful water lily paintings were being created in my backyard as the kids congregated on a blanket around the pond.

5 year old

6 year old

8 year old

I think they all caught the essence of impressionist painting, my goal when I first introduced Monet. But what happened in my backyard that day came as a complete surprise to me as children began to bring me their finished works of art as we packed up to head back into the studio.

8 year old

I did have one young boy who had grander ideas about the best way to spend a beautiful Vancouver summer day other than in my backyard. I have to agree a day at spent on the shores of the Pacific Ocean would be marvelous.

But until then, I am quite content with the day I spent with these talented young artist sitting in my backyard painting.

small acrylic paintings

I have been admiring the work of Australian artist Tamsin Ainslie. In particular her Instagram project,  A Pencil a Day where she creates one small painting for auction each day of cute little pencil stubs.

Tamsin Ainslie

As the after school art classes were coming to an end, I asked the Preteen class what they would like to do in the last few classes. I find when I give something that open ended, it causes the kids to draw a bland so I then showed them a couple of artist I was admiring of recent and they all fell in love!! with these cute little pencil paintings.

We discussed the different elements of the paintings and then they went through my enormous pencil box and found some of the more "well loved" pencils and took them down to stubs with a pencil sharpener.

I happened to have some very small canvases on hand, so they created their very own little pencil paintings. I did give them the option of using any of the art supplies available for their paintings, like a watercolor tube, but each and every one of them wanted to make a pencil.

They were thrilled with their results. 

I put them on little easels at the end for them to display at home which was a very big hit.

The preteen class had so much fun that I decided to do a similar project with the Elementary class. This time I let them pick whatever subject matter they wanted for their acrylic painting.

"Mr. Fox" 6 year old

One young boy wanted to paint a fox. He had a lovely sketch on the canvas and the next time I walked by, the fox was wearing a very distinguished jacket. I was totally smitten and wonder what wonderful story could be created around this sweet little painting.

Dancing Bear, 6 year old

This is a new student who I found out after she created this artwork is quite shy to draw. I'm not sure why when you look at all the personality she created in this wonderful work!

7 year old

This beautiful bird was also created. I love to watch the focus this artist puts into his pieces. He always creates work that takes my breath away. And while there was a lot of interest in painting birds, there was a loud request for me to have the studio bird, Parakeet the Parapete, in for modeling.

I can't tell you how happy I am that I listened to the kids.

Parapete the Parakeet, 9 year old

Within the week, Parapete escaped in the most bizarre of circumstances. We searched endlessly for him for a week and have been absolutely devastated by his disappearance.

Parapete, 7 year old

We have finally had to come to terms with saying goodbye to this sweet little bird. Our family will miss his catcall whistles as we came down each morning, it was so good for the ego. Not quite as big as his ego as he constantly let us know what a pretty bird, a very pretty bird, a pretty, pretty, pretty bird he was as he finally capped his litany of pretties with a Parapete is a pretty bird.

I will truly cherish all the pictures in my records of the artworks he inspired in the children over the past year and I know not only our family but the studio artist will miss this little guy.

Love you Parapete.

preschool acrylic paintings

I had so much fun in May running two preschool classes.

Working with this age group is so rewarding as everything is exciting and their enthusiasm is contagious.

With the Wednesday group, I had each child bring in a favorite toy. This was inspired by one little boy in the class who brought a wooden pull toy each week that was his "dog". I truly thought he would paint that dog, but surprised me by bringing a corduroy stuffed elephant instead named Ellie.

This little boy had a wonderful time mixing colors in his background but what really excited him was adding the corduroy lines. He first ran the back of his brush through the thick wet paint and then once dry used the black oil pastel to highlight it again.

4 year old

I placed all the toys in the center of the table so they could "model" for the young artist.

I handed the children woody pencils and asked them to sketch the shapes of their toys.

Once they had all their sketches finished, I traded their pencils for black oil pastels. I made sure they knew that they only had to trace over the lines they were happy with and could ignore anything they didn't want as the paint would cover it up.

Why do I have them use oil pastel? Well when they start layering on the paint, the pastel seems to hold up against it so they don't completely lose all their sketching work and can still see their original idea.

I always use painting projects as an opportunity to explore mixing colors with this age group and they LOVE mixing colors!

4 year old

Just look at the rainbow spotlight behind Sophia the doll! And that hair, be still my heart. Each and every new color she mixed was excitedly announced to me, "Jeri! Jeri! Look what I made!" It was so stinkin' cute.

4 year old

I had them paint the background first that way if they went over their subject drawings, and they did, they would be able to paint over top the background so the subject was the star. This is not Bunny Buns first appearance in this young artists' work and I believe it is her most beloved companion. One time it use to be pink but as she stated numerous times while mixing her colors to paint, she is now grey and you can see this young girl reference that fact in the very thoughtful color choices she made in the painting.

Are these not the most precious keepsakes of toys that have a special place in their young lives?!

The Monday preschool class created flower paintings again with a focus on observing and exploring mixing colors.

I had some yellow gerber daisies left over from the preteen flower project and put one flower in a vase in front of each young artist.

Using the same steps as above, I had them first really look at the flowers and observe the shapes and details.

4 year old

You can see the details of their observations in their artwork too. The round circles in the center of the flower and the smaller petals surrounding the larger ones.

4 year old

I spoke to them about "artist choice" and told them that although the flower was  yellow by no means did they need to paint a yellow flower. They could choose their favorite color they wanted and guess what? Every four year old chose pink! Who knew?

They also had the choice of whatever color they wanted for their background but once the first little girl announced she wanted turquoise, they all wanted turquoise. These colors were all mixed directly on their papers using the primary colors. I truly love the movement of their brushstrokes and the variety of beautiful colors they created.

4 year old

When finished they had the opportunity to go over their black oil pastel lines and for fun I handed them white china pencils to play with and explore. You can see they all had fun using them in the center of their flowers.

I think people underestimate the capabilities of this age group. They are quite excited to try observational drawing and trying some of the "big kid" techniques.  I find by offering open ended projects, that allow them to interpret what they are observing however they want along with the opportunity to create their own unique colors by mixing primary paints together still offers up lots of process based learning. 

As I tell the parents, the objective is never product but I'm continually amazed that when left to do what they want while at the same time giving them the choice of using some "artist tip secrets" as they are called in the studio, they come up with some amazing works of art that only young children seem to be able to capture.

abstracted acrylic flower paintings from real life

A few weeks ago I bought a small arrangement of flowers from our neighborhood mom and pop store on my way home from Vancouver Art Gallery. I unceremoniously plopped them into a vase and stuck them in the middle of the studio tables just prior to the preteen class arriving that night.

After they arrived we began to talk about abstraction. We discussed the broad range of different ways artist abstract their work and the definition of abstraction and then I challenged them to find a way to change the shape, color or line (or do all three) to create a painting of the vase of flowers on the table.

To help them along I put on the palettes some orange/red paint and asked them to first just block in the shapes of their composition with only that color

no detail

just simple shapes of circles, rectangles, squares, and triangles.

Once finished I handed each of them a palette of primary colored acrylic paint along with black and white to begin painting.

Although I usually always have the students start with painting the backgrounds, in this case I asked them to wait until the very end. I also told them they did not have to paint their flowers and such to the edge of the shapes if they didn't want too. They were more than able to change their minds and adjust their original compositions.

In fact this artist had her vase originally bleeding off the bottom of her paper. She was quite unhappy and I told her she certainly could still change it drastically by just painting the negative space of the background. I don't think she quite believed me at first but was thrilled when she discovered sometimes I might know what I'm talking about.

The other interesting thing both the above artist discovered was that because they had painted these shapes in orange first, they could go back into the wet acrylic paint with the wrong side of their paint brushes and scratch in line work. You'll notice in both paintings how the artist used this technique to abstract their lines in the flowers and leaves.

What I was most excited about at the end of class when I looked at the final artworks is the wide variety of final compositions. I always stress that as artist the students have an open invitation to make whatever artistic choices that please them. This means they can edit or add to their artwork as they see fit. 

The students were looking at a simple blue vase of flowers that included a lily, one stem of daisies, three small pink roses, and a variety of leaf stems. Look at everything else these artists began to add!

Abstracting the flowers was not an easy challenge for these students and I was so impressed with their willingness to not only embrace something that was surprisingly difficult for them in the beginning, but work through it and find their own personal way to conquer the challenge.

Just look at this artwork! She was not so sure of the challenge I set forth in the beginning but charged forward with a confidence most practice artist can only dream about.

And finally there was this piece. In a million years I would of never thought to lose the vase entirely and take the flowers and put them in a completely different environment. And I love the red leaves she left from when she originally blocked out the shapes.

When the artwork was finished, the students had left, and I was hanging the paintings up on the walls for the week to dry, I was struck at just how uniquely each young artist resolved the challenge I set forth for them inspired by a very simple vase of flowers.

I was beyond impressed with each of the final artworks they created and very proud of each of them for being open minded, trying something new, and not giving up as they navigated their way through the process.

Their efforts were certainly rewarded in the end.