Paper Paintings Lesson, Part 1

Having attended the workshop given by Elizabeth St. Hilaire Nelson this past Saturday, I am inspired to do more collaging in this style.

For a bit of background, collage is usually defined by the application of paper in a thoughtful way to a substrate (what the art is created on- paper, cardboard, wood, etc.). Collage is NOT the same as decoupage. Decoupage traditionally covers the surface of any object, without a lot of artistic thought (though I am not saying it is not creative). Collage is an artistic medium. I like to think of it as the next step after decoupage.

I really enjoyed learning Nelson's approach to collage, and the idea of the "paper painting." She truly treats the application of paper to her pieces like painting, and achieves a very unique effect.  Everyone at the workshop achieved different results in their pieces, and I believe everyone was successful. Unfortunately, I forgot my phone, so I don't have any images of the other teachers' pieces, just mine.

 (One of Elizabeth St. Hilaire Nelson's pieces. I feel this really demonstrates what a paper painting is.)

For this post I want to outline the basic steps in this process. I don't claim to have pioneered this, but want to share a student-friendly version of the process.

As with any project, students should start with an image and sketch it out. We sketched directly onto our substrate, in the teachers' case, a piece of wood. For students, you can use almost anything. We were informed that cardboard was good, and matboard could also work, but both will warp due to the amount of media used in the pieces.

 (the original image: my dog, Skipper and the sketch on the wooden board)

 
(Note: I have heard that once the front is dry (on any student work, not just paper paintings) you can brush glue on the back and let it dry, and it will straighten out some. I have not personally tried this, so I can't guarantee it, but if anyone does try it before I do, let me know how it turns out! courtneypla [at] gmail [dot] com.)

It is a good idea for students to create an under-painting of their piece. (In this case, you could have them use a past painting assignment, or have them create a new painting.) The under-painting gives them an idea of where their colors will be laid when they start working with the papers. These under-paintings should be a loose quality: make sure students aren't overworking them, otherwise they might be timid about putting the paper over top.

(Here is my underpainting. I used just enough color/ value to indicate where I want the paper-painted tones to go)

The next step is preparing the paper for the final pieces. Elizabeth informed us that she does this in large "batches" of every color, giving thought to colors that will largely be used in the piece while also creating a full spectrum. The creation of the painted paper is a lot of fun, but followed some basic guidelines:

• Never use watercolors to paint your paper- they will bleed when coated (Test tempera and other water-soluble paints for bleeding before use).
• Use Acrylic paints to paint the paper. They will not bleed.
• Use stamps to create tone-on-tone texture effects. The benefits: tone-on-tone keeps the paper interesting, but not distracting. (You could have students make eraser stamps in a lesson before this, and have those to use for other projects like this.)
• Make every color you can!
• Use all different kinds of papers. Some of my favorites? Maps, anything with handwriting on it, old homework, book pages (yes, you will have to destroy books), art papers, any papers in need of recycling, paper grocery bags.

When you are ready to paint the papers, the paints will need to be thinned out with water. Students can paint the papers, and then work on top of the painted pages with stamps, brayers, anything that creates a texture on the page. As stated above, keep it tone-on-tone. Students can recycle works that they were unhappy with as well.

Once the papers are dry, they should be torn into smallish pieces, and sorted by color. (I would separate by color and set up a group of bags for each table with K-8; high schoolers can either make their own and trade with friends, or work with one communal supply.) Now the students are ready to start Part II: Paper Painting!

Stay tuned for Paper Painting, Part II!

MMM: Fluid Acrylics

A big part of our Saturday workshop was the use of Fluid Acrylics, specifically the Golden brand. Therefore I wanted to introduce this fantastic profession medium.

I have had my Fluid Acrylics for several years, and I love working with them more than traditional Acrylic paints. Why? Because of their unique characteristics.

There are two major brands that carry Fluid Acrylics: Liquitex and Golden. Both companies produce a variety of acrylics paints, mediums, and varnishes. I have used both, but as stated above, I prefer Golden Fluid Acrylics. They have a more fluid consistency and seem to mix more successfully with water than their Liquitex counterparts.

(images: Liquitex image, via the Liquitex website, Golden image via in2art.com)

According to the Golden Website, 

"Fluid Acrylics are highly intense, permanent acrylic colors with a consistency similar to heavy cream. Produced from lightfast pigments, not dyes, they offer very strong colors with very thin consistencies...Unlike mixtures of heavy-bodied paints and water which produce weak color and films by dilution, Fluid Acrylics contain high pigment levels suspended in an acrylic polymer vehicle. The result offers fine dispersion, high tinting strength, durability, flexibility and good adhesion."

 What does this mean? They are not nearly as thick as regular/ heavy bodied acrylics, and mix like a dream. Because of the high amounts of pigment, they mix really well with water and other acrylic mediums. A little bit goes a LONG way. On a personal note, I believe that they are much easier to mix, too.

You can use Fluid Acrylics on anything you could use regular acrylics on. I will recommend that if you are painting on canvas, make sure you prime it really well. These paints are expensive, and you don't want the canvas to soak them up. I have used them in a lot of my work, and have never been disappointed.

Another great point about fluid acrylics is that you can get metallic colors. I have several by golden: a yellow-gold, a true gold, copper, and a micacious iron oxide. These cover really well, and I love the quality of the pigments.

Last point: They are a must have for mixed media! Fluid Acrylics cover really well, and most are transparent making them good substitutes for glazes. You can layer a lot without building up a lot of surface, which is ideal for a lot of altered books and mixed media sketch books. I like using them with stencils, stamps, brayers, and other simple printmaking tools.

Both Liquitex and Golden Fluid Acrylics are available at Michaels (hello, 40% off coupon!). You can buy just the Liquitex brand at JoAnn Fabrics, and there are many online sources to purchase from. I originally bought a starter set, and a few additional colors to get me started, which would be my recommendation if you have never tried the medium before. These are an amazing medium to use with Advanced students, but they are expensive, so probably not within reach for some of our budgets.

I urge you to give this medium a try. If you already use Fluid Acrylics, what do you think of them? Would you recommend them to other practicing artists/ students?

*Note: I was not compensated for this review, I just really like working with Golden Acrylics in general. Everyone has their preference, and I actually do use both brands.

No Marvelous Monday Medium Today

Today ended up being busier than I thought it would be, so instead of talking about a specific medium I am telling you to go check out the work of Elizabeth St. Hilaire Nelson.

(A "paper painting" of Nelson's. She mixes painting and collage for a nice effect.)

I am very lucky to be attending a workshop given by this talented artist on Saturday, from 9-3. I can't wait to work along side other teachers! I will be working on some of the "homework" we were given this week. That means this week has a sort-of theme!

(I love her use of color in every piece!)

Elizabeth is a local artist, and it's interesting how my internship teacher came to know about her. She had a student in her class that babysat for the artist, so the student introduced my teacher to the work. Mrs. Nelson actually came in and did a demonstration for the AP students of her technique.

(I love birch trees, and the use of music sheets to create the unique bark texture in this piece.)

As her technique requires unique papers, I plan to paint up some of my own for the workshop. We are also supposed to sketch out our image and do an underpainting. After watching the DVD put out by Nelson, it seems like the underpainting acts as two things: A road map for the paper pieces, and a means to leave some painted effects in the pieces.

(The visibility of the wood panel as the background is a nice touch. I also like the clever use of stamps.)

Needless to say, I am very interested to see how all of our final pieces turn out on Saturday. Check back in for updates on my "homework" on Wednesday.

What are you doing this week?

A first: FRIDAY FLASH

This Friday's Friday Flash is a new twist on the traditional portrait assignment. It was originally inspired by two of my AP students.

After explaining that she was looking for "those shaped wooden things that you can paint on" (shaped wooden plaques), I was able to say "Oh yeah, I have a bag of those at home. I'll bring them in tomorrow." The bag of them was produced, and several of the plaques disappeared into the depths of their portfolios. Two of the girls started painting right away, inspiring the lesson.

(A portrait of my student's best friend. The two will be attending separate colleges, so her shirt says "King" for the college she will be attending.)

I started the lesson off by introducing students to the historical context of portrait miniatures.

Resources: Artists and Ancestors, Wikipedia Entry

As the students were more advanced, I did not create a handout. I showed them my examples, and instructed them to create mini portraits of other people (not self portraits). 

(These are my examples, two matching pieces. One is a self portrait, the other is my husband.)

For my pieces, I used small shaped wooden plaques. You can purchase them at JoAnn or Michaels and I am sure any other hobby/ craft store in your area. I checked the prices, and the smaller shapes are $0.69 a piece.

(This is a simple composition. The student used acrylics, and put a few coats of gesso over the plaque.)

In order to use the plaques, they must first be primed with Gesso. I ended up using fluid acrylics on my pieces, as watercolor would not adhere to the surface, but it seemed that several coats of gesso made it possible to use watercolors.

We were also very fortunate to have had a box of frames donated, so many of the students used watercolor paper instead. 

 (This is a great example of AP students using the project as a catalyst for their concentration pieces. The piece on the left highlights the eyes, which happened to be the student's concentration. In the piece on the right, the student has used a bike tire as a halo-like shape for his concentration, bikes.)

Even if you don't have the resources to purchase plaques or frames for students, you can still use watercolor for this assignment, just have them create a frame for the piece instead. It could be painted or a separate collaged piece.

(If you ignore the picture frames, these two pieces could have easily been complete with just the watercolor paper (right) and paper with a mat board frame (left) )

This lesson was very open-ended, which worked well for the advanced students. I will be putting together a more structured handout that could be used for other levels/ ages, which I will post at a later time.

I hope this helps to bring you some inspiration! What do you think of the project?

Internship is over...

Now that I have finished my senior internship, I have a TON of material to share on this blog, and that is really exciting! It also means I am graduating, and am officially A TEACHER! Also very exciting.

These facts aside, I have been giving a lot of thought to this blog; namely its organization. When I think about what I want to share here, I was able to come up with some basic plans:

1. Set a schedule of sorts to keep posting organized and on topic.
2. Choose topics that will be helpful to students and teachers alike.
3. Share lesson plans and examples of student work.
4. At some point bring in some guest posters, especially for elementary level lessons.

With these things in mind I would like to reveal my plans for posting:

Marvelous Monday Medium

Share a medium or technique.

Wednesday's Weekly Whiz

Share a contemporary artist, and some basic lesson ideas to go with their work.  

Friday Flash

Share a lesson plan/ idea.

I am going to try my best to keep to this schedule, and the silly names: I really do enjoy alliteration. What would you like to see?

Spring Break

Spring break is here, and that means it's time for some reflection, catch-up, and relaxation.

I think as a student I never quite understood that teachers looked forward to breaks as much as we did: it was their JOB, and my parents had JOBS and they didn't get breaks... However, teaching is a different animal. We have busy times, and busier times. I feel there is a need for time off, and that it's important to take at least some of that time to reflect on the general state of the classroom.

Chances are your grades just went in too, so how are the students doing? 

I will be taking time to reflect on this question, and how I can alter my approach to teaching to better benefit my students. The one thing I have been thinking about lately is making sure students are really learning about art while creating it.

Remember...

 

(image via Onesidezero)

Even as we are showing our students work by other artists, and basing projects around them, it's always good to remember to keep to our own unique styles. It's up to the art teacher to teach the difference between "borrowing" and straight-up copying. There are numerous motifs that have been repeated in the art world for centuries. The motifs are safe to use and reuse, but we want to make them our own not simple knock-offs of someone else's work.

Remember: your artwork doesn't have to look or be "perfect". Copying someone else's work or style isn't going to help you to become a better artist, practicing drawing from life (a lot) will.

Now Twitter Enabled

You can find me on twitter @plateaches. I'm not sure yet how I am going to utilize the twitter service, but I felt that this was a good time to get signed up and comfortable with the technology.

Common Misconceptions

This was a really interesting read.

My favorite: George Washington never had wooden teeth!

The Teacher

"I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”

-Goethe

New Year, New Plan

Well, the holidays are over, and it's a brand new year. I registered this blog quite a long time ago, with plans to use it when I was good and ready. After following a few amazing Education blogs, and through my own Education and Internship experiences I finally have a clear view of where this blog is going, and what I want to do with it. 

I want to integrate personal experience, lesson plans/ planning, technology, tutorials, and lots of other things to help and inspire students, educators-in-training, educators, and anyone else interested in an amazing art experience.

I look forward to bringing you useful and insightful content this year.

Happy 2011!

-Mrs. Pla

I would like to own this poster

I have unfortunately forgotten the source- this was saved on my computer for a while. If anyone finds it, please leave me a comment.

Education!

By: eLearners.com

Beauty, Women, and Advertisement

Transcript: (taken from Defnatalie)

"

Sometimes people say to me, “You’ve been talking about this for 40 years, have things gotten any better?” And actually I have to say really they’ve gotten worse. Ads sell more than products. They sell values, they sell images, they sell concepts of love and sexuality, of success and perhaps most important – normalcy. To a great extent they tell us who we are and who we should be.

Well what does advertising tell us about women? It tells us, as it always has, that’s what’s most important is how we look. So the first thing the advertisers do is surround us with images of ideal female beauty. Women learn from a very early age that we must spend enormous amounts of time, energy and above all money, striving to achieve this look and feeling ashamed and guilty when we fail. And failure is inevitable because the ideal is based on absolute flawlessness. She never has any lines or wrinkles, she certainly has no scars or blemishes, indeed she has no pores. And the most important aspect of this flawlessness is that it can not be achieved, no one looks like this including her; and this is the truth, no one looks like this. The supermodel Cindy Crawford once said, “I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford.” She doesn’t, she couldn’t, because this is a look that’s been created for years through airbrushing and cosmetics but these days it’s done through the magic of computer retouching. Keira Knightley is given a bigger bust; Jessica Alba is made smaller; Kelly Clarkson… well isn’t this interesting it says, “Slim down your way” but she in fact slimmed down the Photoshop way. You almost never see a photograph of a woman considered beautiful that hasn’t been Photoshopped.

We all grow up in a culture in which women’s bodies are constantly turned into things and objects, here’s she’s become the bottle of Michelob. In this ad she becomes part of a video game. And this is everywhere, in all kinds of advertising. Women’s bodies are turned into things and objects. Now of course this affects female self esteem. It also does something even more insidious – it creates a climate of widespread violence against women. I’m not at all saying that an ad like this directly causes violence, it’s not that simple but turning a human being in to a thing is almost always the first step towards justifying violence against that person. We see this with racism, we see it with homophobia, we see it with terrorism. It’s always the same process. The person is dehumanised and violence becomes inevitable. And that step is already and constantly taken against women.

Women’s bodies are dismembered in ads, hacked apart – just one part of the body is focused upon, which of course is the most dehumanising thing you could do to someone. Everywhere we look, women’s bodies have been turned into things and often just parts of things. And girls are getting the message these days just so young, that they need to be impossibly beautiful. Hot, sexy, extremely thin – they also get the message that they’re going to fail, there’s no way they’re going to really achieve it. Girls tend to feel fine about themselves when they’re 8, 9, 10 years old but they hit adolescence and they hit the wall and certainly a part of this wall is this terrible emphasis on physical perfection. So no wonder we have an epidemic of eating disorders in our country and increasingly throughout the world.

I’ve been talking about this for a very long time and I keep thinking that the models can’t get any thinner but they do. They get thinner and thinner and thinner. This is Ana Carolina Reston who died a year ago of anorexia weighing 88 pounds and at the time she was still modelling. So the models literally can not get any thinner so Photoshop is brought to the rescue. There are exceptions however – Kate Winslet has been outspoken about her refusal to allow Hollywood to dictate her weight. When British GQ magazine this photograph of Winslet which was digitally enhanced to make her look dramatically thinner, she issued a statement that the alterations were made without her consent and she said, “I don’t look like that and more importantly I don’t desire to look like that. I can tell you that they’ve reduced the size of my legs by about a third.” Bless her heart.

So, what can we do about all of this? Well the first step is to become aware, to pay attention, and to recognise that this affects all of us. These are public health problems that I’m talking about. The obsession with thinness is a public health problem, the tyranny of the ideal image of beauty, violence against women. These are all public health problems that affect us all and public health problems can only be solved by changing the environment."

Kiwi!