paint cut paste

after a white-chocolate-chip-and-raspberry-gluten-free-pancake breakfast a couple sundays ago, N was lured outside by the sight of her easel. still in her pjs, she requested paint (tempera) and a jacket (summer mornings are chilly in the bay area.) she got down to the business of being the artist she is.

the day before, i had the pleasure of a mom’s day out in san francisco, where three friends and i visited the SFMOMA gertrude stein exhibit and treated ourselves to lunch at cafe gratitude and crazy flavored ice creams at humphry slocombe. mmm… i digress (as ice cream makes me do.) while at the museum, i picked up a matisse post card to bring back to N since she couldn’t be with me that day. (i’ll be bringing her back to the exhibit this summer, for sure! she’d love all the matisse, picasso, cézanne, etc.)

postcard i got for N: henri matisse, femme au chapeau, 1905; oil on canvas. image from wikipedia

N said she was “so inspired by the postcard of the lady” so she wanted to paint portraits “with weird colors, like matisse did.” she asked me to be her first model. i had to sit still on a chair in our backyard while she painted me, with “weird colors.”

notice the matisse in the lower right corner

next, my pj-clad husband was asked to sit for his portrait. and he (and his coffee) happily obliged.

i love how focused she was when painting these pieces…

next, the artist asked to be the model – and she wanted me to paint her portrait. whenever i make art alongside my daughter, i do so in her “artistic handwriting,” so to speak, as a way of communicating that i am witnessing and supporting her. this also gently thwarts a child’s natural tendency to compare. (to read more on these ideas, visit a blog i wrote on how to talk to your children about art.)

after these, N made quick portraits of both of our cats, who were watching from inside the screen door. we hung these to dry on our clothesline art-drying line in the play shed, while N admired her work.

this master-in-the-making was quite proud of this exhibit!

did you see the artful parent’s 10 simple art activites post this week? [it was jean-ius! if not, you should take a peek - she even offers a printable sheet of ideas to post in your art space as reminders.] it totally inspired me to bust out some q-tips and paint and introduce N to the idea of pointillism!

first, we had a little art lesson from my favorite art history texts (good ol’ gardner and janson) and perused some seurat images.

then i put out a limited palette – magenta, orange, yellow, and cyan. (magenta, yellow, and cyan are the CMYK model of primary colors for ink printing, so they can create most colors when layered.) and our tool: q-tips.

N was excited about this from the beginning and went to work making a starry night sky and moon, and then a car driving on the road.

then she asked for her markers because she wanted to try pointillism with those. good thinking! so she created a beach scene.

this is the piece where N invented "dash-illism" because "dashes are easier"

N has just begun her next marker pointillism masterpiece… i have a feeling she’ll be working on this one a while.

momma got in on the action, too — i found it quite meditative!

try pointillism with q-tips, paintbrushes, markers, eraser tips of pencils, or do-a-dot markers.

what do you dot dot dot with?

N was on my lap while i was at the computer yesterday. (typical.) i was doing a google search for a random rug i’m trying to find that’s been out of stock for far too long to find it. [humph.] anyway, kandinsky’s circle painting happened to come up in the search, and N was attracted to it immediately when she saw it. “ooooh, let’s make that!” she said.

wassily kandinsky, colour study: squares with concentric circles

to begin, i used a thick, black sharpie to draw circles onto a piece of thick drawing paper (we we’re out of watercolor paper) and then i gridded them off into boxes. this gave N some framework in which to paint, though it isn’t a necessary step. in hindsight, it would have been awesome to use watersoluble crayons (easily one of my favorite media ev-ar!!!) or watercolor pencils for these guidelines. even using pastels or crayons would be cool because they’re colorful and resist the watercolors.

i offered her pans of watercolors, matte and metallic, just for fun. i showed her how to make concentric circles with the brush, and she was off and running with it on her own. (oooh, six mandalas…)

after she finished the first piece, she wanted to draw her own circles with the sharpie and paint them in, which she did.

this one reminds me of murano glass.

while she was doing that, i drew some concentric circles with the marker on another page. after she finished painting, she said she wanted to color those with crayons.

such lovely bubbles of mixed-media color – she loved our pollock painting, and here’s another masterpiece a la the late greats.

i still remember the most fun day of my high school AP art history class – it was the day that each student brought in a big can of paint and a canvas, and got super messy outside making splatter paintings inspired by jackson pollock.

i knew my little lady would be down for this, as soon as it warmed up enough outside! (i’d be completely loony if i tried this indoors.) it seems like it’s finally sprummer here… hooray – so we brought our paints and canvas outside to play. you can do this on canvas, fabric, paper, greeting cards, etc.

N was so excited when i showed her how to load her brush up with watery acrylic paint and flick it across the canvas and drizzle it above the canvas. she was so exhuberant that she wanted to slam it down onto the canvas, and called her technique the “splash-hit.” i went with it.

we both had tons of messy fun in the yard changing colors, mixing colors, and going crazy with different sort of techniques to get the paint onto the canvas without touching the canvas.

so simple, and so much fun! it is an awesome way to get your child into their body while painting, and to work with a large range of broad motions, using various actions to create art!

oh, and forget the smocks. just wear your messy art clothes! (if you don’t have outfits like this, designate some for carefree summer fun.)

admiring her masterpiece

this piece makes a welcome colorful addition to N’s personal art gallery…