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!

That Thing That Makes You, You

Each year, the children lay down the first layer of their self portraits imagining carefully placed internal organs. This year though, things had to be changed. One of the children DID NOT like the idea of internal organs. 

Our first foray into talking about internal organs found him slowly building up a level of terror that overwhelmed him. We had just finished a small group research session, pouring over some human body books and were sketching out internal organs. He drew a heart and then the idea of talking about, adding to, imagining other organs became an all-stop, do not pass go, I need my daddy RIGHT NOW kind of moment.

"Energy balls" radiate from the center of the chests on these portraits.

So, on to Plan B.

I decided that I would do a mini-session with him using my car engine in order to back our way in to a discussion about the circulatory system, hearts as engines, etc. and that he could bypass altogether that first layer of the self-portrait series. But, I will be the first to tell you that it makes me nervous to not have that first layer on the portrait, it just seems like it would be wrong. As I thought about why I felt that, I realized that, in the past, the internal organ painting layer usually revealed something about the painter. It is my favorite layer. Plan B became about shaping the thing that makes that first layer so precious and in the end, our little one who had just been so worried about the idea of beating heart, flowing blood, and breathing air, embraced the project.

These two portraits have a special emphasis on eyes and
mouths as well as central cores.

During arrival time, the co-oping parents helped me introduce the idea in bits and pieces to some of the children and then we talked about it as a group during circle. This is the idea in a nutshell, on the first layer you should paint the thing that makes you special. Some people call it your spirit, your aura, your energy, or your soul, or maybe it is your favorite color or your favorite thing. (I made sure to add, "you know, your favorite thing, like Lego" for our especially concerned about internal organs customer). It is the thing that makes you, you.

A collection

Then I changed things up and gave the children watercolors for this first layer. We usually use tempera for the whole project. The reason I chose watercolor is because the watercolor will hold fast and it will reveal itself and make its presence known through each additional layer. The watercolor is that strong. It makes that much of a statement. And that is what we are looking for, isn't it?

"I want my insides to be beautiful."

And this, is that thing that makes our worried child, less worried.

Fairytale Cities

Friends help friends hold the stencils.

One of the children donated Taschen's Grimm's Fairytales to the School in celebration of her "growing day". The book is beautiful, both inside and out, bound in purple cloth with sewn-in ribbon bookmarks.  The illustrations are stunning. Using the one on the back cover of the book as inspiration, the children used stencils and permanent markers to sketch out buildings and then used watercolors to bring them to life.

The watercolor layer.

Once the watercolor was dry, the children used gold (pictured below) and silver acrylic paint to fill in the backgrounds. This was a change in plan. I was actually going to ask the children to cut out the painted buildings to later collage them against painted sky backgrounds. The watercolors were so lovely, I talked to the artists about my idea and they voted on using the gold and silver acrylics instead. Gold and silver metallic paint, is after all, almost as good as glitter.

Backgrounds using gold and silver acrylics.

 The collected works.

Day and Night Forests, p.s. there's glitter

This week we conducted a comparative study of these books...Baba Yaga and the Wise Doll adapted by Oran Hiawyn and illustrated by Ruth Brown (love, love her illustrations and the Leaves LOVE her book, Toad), Babushka Baba Yaga by Patricia Polacco (I am, personally, not a fan of this book, but that is the adult-me talking), and we are now in the middle of Anna and The Seven Swans but Maida Silverman. We read the Wise Doll on Monday because it set up the project for the day perfectly. The children have been working on day and night paintings and last week they collaged trees onto their night backgrounds. These books show three versions of "forest" and the children are creating their own story illustrations. 

The children are adding watercolor paint on top (and beside) the tempera paint.  

We talked about how if the trees are close together or are leaning, the forest appears scarier to a small child (we will revisit this again when we work on the stories next week). Merrick's trees grow so close together that you can only see a hint of the full moon behind them. The trees are also dark in grays, black, and purple. On Monday, they will collage the trees onto their day sky. In case you are wondering why these projects are spaced just so, it is because the backgrounds are layered tempera and watercolor. When a glue wash is applied to these (especially the watercolor) the paint AND the paper used for the trees will bleed. Since each sky and trees feature different shades, the glue and the glue brushes would carry those colors with them and by the time the last children began their projects, their colors would no longer be their own.

Oh and p.s. there has to be glitter.

Wild Island Maps

We read a chapter a day from the book, My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett to set up the discussion of mapping and adventure for our Sense of Place unit. We focus on how my father uses the contents of his knapsack to get out of tough situations with wild animals living on Wild Island so it is mostly a story time discussion. When we finish the book, I ask the children to draw the map of Wild Island, how my father got there, as well as anything else they can remember about the island from the description of it in the book. For example, sticky leaves, clearings, the stepping stones, and the river are all things children name as they draw. They often designate certain symbols as "danger" or where we can find the dragon.