In Art Sometimes The Whole Is Indeed Greater Than The Parts

I’m working on a big art project for a school auction.  My class is 4th graders, 9 and 10 years old.  All of the kids in the class must participate in a piece of art that will be auctioned off at the beginning of October.

Organizing 30+ kids for an art project for an item that will be auctioned in such a short period of time is daunting.   The amount of time available in the classroom is not huge, so I had to come up with something pretty simple that they could do.  I had them create art material for me to use in a collage piece.

I asked them to create a monochromatic painting with different values, shades (adding black) and tints (adding white), of one color.  Of course, I didn’t mention monochromatic or color value or shades and tints.  I should them some examples.  I asked them to start out painting their piece of paper a solid color.  I then asked them to put a two puddles on a piece of wax paper, add white to one puddle, add black to the other puddle.  Then I asked them to create a pattern using at least the two new colors they created.

Above, you can see some of the example of their work.  A few of them didn’t follow the instructions exactly, but I can work around that.  You can see that individually each painting is not nearly as special as the combination of all of the paintings together.  Over the next few weeks, I (with the help of 2 mothers) will be creating a collage piece using the paintings the students created.  We will creating art from art.

Art materials are only as fine as what you make of them.  They don’t need to be expensive or fancy.  I hope we can create something a little bit unexpected from the paintings my classroom created.  I have my fingers crossed that this will work out well.

What I Learned Today:  I now have a deep respect for any teacher who can patiently bring that many kids under control.  I only spent 1 1/2 hours in the classroom for one day, the teacher spends 6 hours a day, 5 days a week.  I don’t know how they do it.