Circle Prints

Last year's circle prints have generated some buzz, so here is a quick how to...first, these are textured prints -- the black is a mixture of glue, shaving cream, and tempera. Mixed properly, it will leave a raised print. I would not recommend using a brush with this mixture. The older children used this paint mixture on their landscape studies, you can find that <here>. They used paint spatulas to apply the paint over encaustic.

The younger class used plastic lids and cardboard tubes to apply the circles on painted sheets of paper. It is important to note that some of the children were playing catch-up -- they did not have paintings, so they applied the circles on blank sheets and then later applied water color.

Each approach (blank paper versus already painted paper) offers a different perspective and conversation with color and materials as you can see...

Circles first, paint second for "Igloo Made of Snow"

Paint first, circles second for "Day"

Portrait Backgrounds 2013

This year ZIPPED past. These paintings, a combination of watercolor and regular-any-old-day tempera (in gray, white, and black) are accented with GOLD tempera. This class places high value -- even glitter-level value -- on gold tempera. The children of Tracks class 2013 are very much about destination, so it made sense to create grand cities with sparkling night skies, shimmering with every color of light, as the backgrounds for their portraits. Paul Klee's work was key.

The work on these backgrounds began weeks and weeks ago. They are so large, that only a handful could be worked on at one time. The paintings had to be moved and stored, and occasionally sorted, re-sorted, but I did not see all of them together until I took the photographs of them today. One word...STUNNING. The children's portraits will be layered on top of these over the next few days. Really looking forward to seeing that last step!

Wooden Blocks

Last year the children painted wooden blocks referencing Hundertwasser. Those blocks had windows and doors.

This year, they painted blocks inspired by Kokeshi dolls -- not in terms of shape, but in terms of message. This doll holds a message or a story. The main reason for this is because I only had rectangular blocks available and Kokeshi dolls are made on a wood lathe (all curves). So to get to the story part, we hid the doll layer beneath shadow lines of black tempera. Now you can only see hints of the story the blocks held. This may not make sense, in fact, I thought the children would lose the original thread of the discussion, "This is a..." but many of them didn't.

They wanted the blue painters' tape placed just so in order to either hide or reveal key pieces of their blocks, a face here, or color blending there. Each block holds a story. The stories are recorded and the blocks will stay at school for future building projects. The "Kokeshi" block stories will have new chapters written each year.