Resist Art

Last week Holly enjoyed a couple of Easter art projects, her favorite was the oil pastel resist egg she designed. It was a very easy and beautiful art project!
She cut a large egg and then drew a design in pencil. Then she colored it in with oil pastels making sure to leave a little white space. Once her design was complete she washed it in a rich pink liquid water color. The results are wonderful!!!

Art Treasury - Wassily Kandinsky

Today we did a small study on Wassily Kandinsky from our Usborne's Art Treasury book. We also spent some time online looking for more information on this artist and viewing several of his art works. Holly learned about the specific piece Squares with Concentric Circles which was painted in 1913... she thought it was cool that that was almost 100 years ago! We learned that his method with this painting was to see how various colors worked with each other or against each other in this abstract art piece. Holly also learned about 'abstract art' - meaning no people, objects or scenes are depicted.

We also tried a modern version of this style of art by folding a large piece of paper in half length wise and then in half twice again to create eight squares. In those eight squares we drew patterns of circles in oil pastels. After the circles were all arranged we then painted in each square with water colors. The paint did a nice job of showing through all the little details in circle where paper was evident, creating a nice resist piece. The colors are vibrant. (I created an art piece with her because she really enjoys that and it helped to show techniques as she was moving along versus simply describing them.)

Holly enjoyed this art project and study so much - we'll have to do another one very soon!