Trends Modern Art

And the Día de los Muertos festivities just keep going and going, right? It's not even noon yet and I have another art project you can do that is super fun and creative, too.

I promised I would share a Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera calavera collage and here it is. If you don't know what a collage is, it is simply a cut paper assemblage. What I love about collage is, you can do anything with some colored paper and scissors. No wonder Henri Matisse called it painting with scissors!

I have bins and bins filled with multi-colored cardstock, paper and tissue paper. Most of it is scraps from other collages I've done. I just hate to throw anything away. Yes, I am that teacher. But really, any cut paper that is left over is perfect to be used again in another collage. Hence, my rather large collection.

So, again I ask you...who needs paint when you have paper and scissors?

I decided to try this collage with my eleven year old son, Sol. It started out as a couple of skeletons, or calaveras, but somewhere down the line it changed to Frida Kahlo (my muse) and her beloved Diego Rivera. Frida is easily recognizable in almost any art medium but Diego was a bit more of a challenge since his most recognizable trait, his large body, can't really be duplicated on a skeleton!

• You will need multiple sheets of cardstock in lots of different colors. The size is dependent on the size of our overall collage.
• You will need one large sheet of paper for your base. We chose a 12 x 12 inch sheet in blue.
• Sharp scissors
• Glue stick. Anything else will cause a huge mess because liquid glue takes forever to dry. More experienced students can use rubber cement, but make sure you have proper ventilation. That stuff stinks!
• If you have older students, consider using tweezers to help shape the smaller details. My son was frustrated by some of the small cut pieces of paper sticking to his fingers, which got lots of glue stick on them.
• When working in collage, start with your large, basic pieces as your foundation. Sol lightly traced his skeleton shape with a pencil before cutting it out. Everything else, we just eyeballed.
• I helped my son with the finer details of this collage, such as Frida's hair, dress and her jewelry, and Diego's shirt.

If you give your students consistent guidance while they are working, their finished projects will turn out amazing! I say "consistent guidance" because there are always students who want to rush through the project. Or there are those who "don't know what to do".  If you take your students through the steps of laying down their foundation shape, then they are more likely willing to continue working on building their skeletons. Sometimes, a blank piece of paper is just too daunting.

Hope you have a blast creating this Día de los Muertos collage. We certainly did!

The artwork above was created by my eleven year old son (with a little help from mom).

Carmen Lomas Garza is a Latina narrative artist who created images about the everyday events in the lives of Mexican Americans based on her memories and experiences in South Texas. Although she wouldn't be considered a "modern artist" because of the time period in which she was working, I thought it was important to share with the students that Garza validated styles classified as "folk art", and that her imagery was powerful, even in it's simplicity.

I was inspired by one of her pieces, Prickly Pear/ A little piece of my heart because of it's illustrative quality. For this project, I kept the materials to a minimum, so that the students could really explore the creative and technical skills they've acquired while working with paint and color pencils.

• Hand out 9 X 12 sheets of Bristol board or Canson watercolor paper. When you are using a wet medium and applying a dry one, you need a paper that can hold up. A floppy piece of construction paper/poster board/drawing paper will simply not do.
• I had several pictures of different varieties of cactus and I showed them to the students, so they would be inspired by all the shapes and colors. They picked their favorite and completed a light sketch.
• Remind students that whenever they are going to use watercolor, any/all of their pencil lines will show through. So they should practice with a light hand.
• After students completed their sketch, they painted their cacti using watercolor paint.
• Once that was dry, they painted a watercolor wash over the background, using several different colors, to give it a rich look.
  
• I handed out prismacolor pencils to the students so that they could enhance the shape of their cactus. Forget using cheap student grade color pencils. All they will do is break down your paper and possible create holes. You will never get any sort of vibrant color from them so toss them out and invest in a good quality student grade and/or artist grade set from Dick Blick. Personally, I am a loyal fan of Prismacolor pencils, but I understand that they are a little too pricey for the classroom. I've had a set for the past fifteen years that are still in great condition.
• Last step is to give the watercolor a tactile edge by cutting out pieces of scrapbooking paper to create the spines/thorns of the cactus. Encourage students to be very sparing of the glue, or else they will make a mess! I prefer stick glue to liquid.

The artwork above was created by a fifth grader.

I am a big fan of American sculptor Louise Nevelson. She appeals to my love of symmetry and found object sculpture. She is well known for assembling "crates" grouped together to form a new creation, then painted in a uniform color to unite the objects.

"When you put together things that other people have thrown out, you’re really bringing them to life – a spiritual life that surpasses the life for which they were originally created."--Nevelson

As is my custom, I've been mulling over a Nevelson project for quite sometime now. I found an interesting take on the project here, but I had my own ideas to take the project to another level, to appeal to my older students.

I have six children, so broken toys, mismatched legos, naked dolls and bits of junk abound. So what I did was, with my kids, go through all of their toy bins. We pulled out stuff they no longer played with, multiples, etc. etc. This was a good way to clean up their stuff, so I totally killed two birds with one stone.

And now I had a collection of things for our sculpture. I wish I had a pic of the sculpture that was created with a doll head that I sawed in two, but it came out completely blurry and the student took it home. Boo hoo. It turned out fab, though. And the doll heads cut in half were big ticket items the day we spent assembling sculptures, to be sure.

Heads up: This was a project that I had to extend into two class sessions. There is too much to do in one class period, even with classroom helpers.

• Acquire some sturdy cardboard as the base for your sculpture. I used the backing from all of my Canson Value Artist pads because I had so many laying around. They worked out perfectly. Of course you can used regular old cardboard and cut it down to the size you wanted to work with. We worked with a 9 X 12 piece.
• Arrange your classroom so you have three working stations: one to assemble, one to glue with hot glue gun and the third for painting. This will make life easier for you because there are always students who rush through their work, and others who are very meticulous.
  
• The fun part: after showing students examples of Nevelson's work, they got to dig into my found object/toy graveyard piles and pick out objects they wanted to work with. Break up the squabbles over the coveted doll heads and airplane parts.
• Encourage students to explore different arrangements just as Nevelson did.
• Then its off to the hot glue gun table. Yes, it might be a little time consuming and I usually melt off half of my fingertips, the end result is much neater and more sturdy compared to basic white glue.
• This is the point where I end the first part of the project. Now I get to lug home all of these sculptures. Yay!
• To prepare for day #2, you will need some white primer. Any primer will do. Students will need to paint a coat of primer over their sculptures so that the paint will adhere to the toys/buttons/dominos/matchbox cars, etc. I also mixed up my own shade of charcoal gray. I believe matte looks best.
  
• On day #2, let students go to town priming their sculptures. The challenge is to get into all the little nooks and crannies of the toys. Primer dries fairly quickly, but if you want to speed along the process, break out with the hair dryer.
• After the primer coat is dry, they need to paint using the charcoal grey color. I choose this color so it would look similar to Nevelson's pieces. Several of the students asked why they couldn't use blue or red...so feel free to use whatever color you want. Use the hair dryer again.
  
• IMHO, the charcoal grey made the sculptures look very dynamic.
  
• At our open house at the end of the semester, these sculptures were one of the most eye-catching displays.
  

The sculpture above was created by a third grader. As you can see, he couldn't quite get the paint into the thread spools and lego nooks. Still looks cool, though!

Finally, another female artist! Sonia Delaunay is the wife of Abstract painter Robert Delaunay and interestingly enough, their work is fairly similar in style. Throughout her career, she explored the concepts of geometric abstraction and Orphism. I thought this would be a great way to introduce repetitive shapes, using a compass and a ruler, and coloring with markers. Everybody loves markers!

At least they do in my house.

We had fun with these markers because I bought a few scented markers in the mix. So throughout the entire class, we were sniffing marker tips--which I only recommend if they are non-toxic, of course.
"Oooh, this is root beer!"
"This smells like chocolate."
"Blueberry!"
"Mmmm, cherry!"
and
"Ew, this smells like window cleaner."

• I bought several inexpensive compasses and rulers and passed them out to the students. They also got a 9 X 12 piece of drawing paper.
• Make sure to instruct your students how to use a compass, and make sure they don't poke huge holes in their paper.
• I brought several packages of Crayola washable markers because they had so many rich, color options and they flowed smoothly.
• After showing the students some of Delaunay's work and they were sufficiently inspired, we got down to drawing.
• The students were instructed to use the compass so they could draw circles of various sizes, careful not to overlap the shapes.
• After they were finished laying out their circles, they used a flat ruler to dissect their drawing.
• And then it's time to get to coloring! Instruct students to use the same color in at least two other places so there can be some sort of cohesiveness in the design and color scheme.
• Give the children tips on how to color with the markers, taking care to use the tip only when doing an outline. Teach them to color by using the sides of the marker, which makes it look more neat and smooth. Then you don't injure the tip of the marker.
• A big plus to using Crayola markers was there was literally no smell. I love Sharpies as much as the next person, but they stink up the classroom to high heaven.

This was a nice change of pace. We will definitely be using markers for our projects again.

The artwork above was created by my 8-year old son.

Last week I decided to share my love (read: obsession) of Frida Kahlo and her self-portraits. On a recent trip to San Francisco to see a large collection of her work at sfmoma, I realized just why she painted so many portraits. It wasn't because she thought she was beautiful or interesting. She painted bowls of fruit or portraits of other people to make money to pay for her mounting doctor bills. She assumed people would not care to pay for her intensely personal paintings. During the times after her many surgeries and when her body was giving way, she was confined to her bed. That was where she painted self-portraits to the point where she perfected her own face.

I wanted to teach the students how powerful color could be to convey emotion. So we embarked on a self-portrait project, splitting the portrait down the middle. One side is their happy, "crazy" side with warm, bright colors. The other is calm, serene side with cool colors.

• Make sure students have a 9 X 12 piece of white paper and a pencil.
• Pass out circle templates and instruct them to draw their own heads. I've found that making them use templates keeps them away from drawing little pinheads.
• Once they have drawn their features, have them draw a line down the center.
• Some of the kids got confused as to what was a cool color and what was a warm color but I think they understood the overall principle.
• We fun with this project. I know I did because I got to talk about Frida Kahlo!

The artwork above was created by a 5th grader.