Painting - non-representational

I truly love that as part of our class in learning how to teach students to experience art, we are experiencing art ourselves.

It was great to grab a brush and explore my creative side. When we began, I knew I wanted to use primarily blue in my painting as that’s my favorite color. And since my upcoming wedding is a big thing on my mind at the moment, I decided I would take the opportunity to paint a representation of my wedding bouquet, as I see it.

I’m glad that we were given all of the colors to work with. Mixing blue with white and black paint on my tray allowed me to achieve the aesthetics I was striving for in my painting. It made me think of what I read in Naomi Pile’s “Art Experiences for Young Children” and what Edith mentioned in class that sometimes teachers don’t provide students with all of the colors to work with. I found that astonishing and very disheartening. Had I not had all of the colors to work with that I did, I wouldn’t have been able to paint what I really wanted to and would have had to compromise my vision.

And that’s when I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I can’t imagine not even allowing students the opportunity to explore and experiment with the different colors to see what they could come up with.

I’m so glad and grateful that we are able to experience and put into practice all of the theories we are reading about. It really makes it feel much more real and helps me to better understand the mindset my students may be in when they’re working with art.

Drawing

It felt really comfortable to draw in class. It was a medium I was so used to. But at the same time, I really appreciated the opportunity to experiment with the various drawing utensils we were presented with in class. I never knew there were so many tools you could draw with.

Though I ended up using the graphite because it felt most comfortable for me (probably because it was the most familiar) I found it really fun to draw with things like ink, a quill and charcoal. I can see, though, how kids can pigeonhole themselves into drawing and not explore any other means of artistic creation — yet another reason why art is so important in the classroom and why it’s critical for us as teachers to introduce and expose kids to various mediums and modes of art.

I also really enjoyed drawing human figures with the use of the ovals to denote parts of the body and joints. I think that approach produces more realistic bodies and alleviates some kids’ concerns with making bodies look “real” when they hit the point where that’s what they’re focused on. In terms of incorporating art with curriculum, that could also lend itself to a lesson on bodies and how they’re put together.

I really appreciate how we are able to explore different mediums and tools for artistic expression in class and I plan to incorporate that same practice in my classroom. 

Painting - representational

It was nice to be able to paint a representational piece in class this week. And the motivation really helped me decide what I wanted to work on, which ended up being a scene of my upcoming honeymoon. I also really enjoyed the addition of turquoise into our pallet. It really allows for richer depth in color that can’t be achieved in the same way with just the other primary colors in the pallet.

With the motivation and the addition of turquoise, I was moved to paint a ship on water with silhouettes of myself and my new husband standing on the deck, waving with a sort of comic book bubble coming out of our heads with hearts in it. I have found in my work with painting in class that I am unable to get down on paper what I might have in my head in terms of images. I think this partially stems from the fact that I did not consistently use paint as a medium in my educational upbringing. I also think that’s why I gravitate toward photography as a favored artistic medium because it’s so accurate in its representation of the image, by its nature.

I think that though I was more comfortable being able to paint representationally, I felt freer painting nonrepresentational images. I wasn’t concerned with making sure the image was just right, I just used the materials for what they were and painted. It was an interesting exercise to have to paint both ways to see what each one feels like. It also helped me understand how important it is not to push children into a stage that they’re not ready for and let them express themselves with painting in whatever stage they’re comfortable with at the time.