Trends Modern Art

In honor of Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock's birthday today (1/28/12), I thought I would share a project that is beloved by all children--action painting!

Pollock would lay down huge tarps of canvas onto the floor. Then he would literally "step into his painting". With buckets of paint, sticks, hardened brushes and even basting syringes, he would drip paint onto the canvas and create these beautiful abstract paintings.

The students love the idea of dripping paint pretty much anywhere. In my experience, the high schoolers love it more than the elementary students! Either way, take care to either do this project outside where a few splatters of paint won't be a big deal, or do yourself a favor and lay out a blue tarp and/or vinyl tablecloths. I also gave fair warning to the students about the messiness of this project, so I encouraged them to wear old clothes and shoes for the day of this project. Thankfully, we were using washable tempera paint.

I thinned my tempera paint with some alcohol, to make sure they had the right consistency. Adding water would have broken down the clarity of the pigments. That said, I'm not sure how the alcohol affects the washable quality of the tempera paint. Maybe I should check into that before recommending this, right?

• Pass out sheets of poster board or Bristol Board. The larger the paper, the better.
• Make sure everyone is spread out and has some elbow room. I'll admit, I attempted this project with a classroom of nine students. I don't know how it would have worked out with a larger class. Pandemonium, I'm sure!
• Pour tempera paint into plastic cups. Give each student a variety of colors and few paintbrushes.
• Students can either drip paint directly from their plastic cup onto their poster board, or they can dip their brushes into the paint and drip and flick away.
• I also considered ketchup/mustard squeeze bottles, those might work well.

Overall, the students really had a blast doing this project. And there was hardly any wasted paint, which drives me nuts. One small hazard, once the tempera paint gets several coats, it tends to harden and crack off, so encourage students to keep their drips moving and not concentrated on one area.

The above project was created by fifth grader.

I have a couple of people ask me what grade I teach so I just wanted to say that I teach at a homeschool co-op, and since we don't have enough teachers to teach each particular grade, we have several grade levels together in each class.

To make it easier for me, I teach the same project each week to both classes. That is how adaptable the projects are!

The elementary school class I teach has third graders through six graders. So there is a big gap in abilities and skills. I tend to seat the younger kids together and so on with the older kids. The younger kids love to have you help them while the older kids get a little grouchy if you touch their work. Believe me, I have learned the hard way. I had a boy break down and cry because I put a paint stroke down on his paper. Oops, my bad. So now, I always ask, "Can I do something on your paper?" before I do anything else.

In my upper grade elective art class, I teach both middle school and high school age students. Again, there is a big gap in abilities and skills. I tend to help the ones who are staring off into space and really struggling with the simplest of instructions and leave the older kids to their own devices, offering some encouragement and praise along the way. Right now, I have a middle-schooler who is blowing me away with his creativity. I also have a senior who has been in my class for three years. He is turning out to be a very disciplined and creative individual. That is the fun part about teaching...watching your students soar!

All that to say that these lessons aren't tailored to a specific grade level. You can adapt them to whatever skill level you have in front of you.