Creativity flourishes in the fresh summer air during an art camp I held at my house.  I really enjoyed experimenting with "what if" I had camp from my home.  For two weeks, I did just that.  It was great to meet neighbors and I simply advertised it on the NextDoor app.  

In Southern France after the Second World War, Picasso worked with artisans at a ceramics factory. Picasso instructed  workers how to shape, form and paint creative pieces.  The pieces were considered "factory art" and sold as souvenirs.  Today these ceramic pieces are valued as 'Picasso art' because of the direct influence and involvement of the artist with the factory workers.  These ceramics are now called "Edition Ceramics" instead of souvenirs.  Some pieces of the Edition Ceramics  are valued from two thousand, to over a hundred thousand dollars.

In art we all were like factory workers creating pinch pots with direct instruction.  We made a pinch pot or bowl with designs. 

We discussed and illustrated the process and journey the clay would travel in the next three weeks.
The clay will go from being formed, drying, fired in the kiln, glazed and fired in the kiln again.  

Because our studies this quarter will focus on Picasso and his friends, we started making a book to contain the facts we believe are the most interesting facts about Picasso we'd like to remember and share once class is over.

Article about Picasso's factory ceramics.  

Fun Facts:

Did you know the newly renovated National Gallery of Art has a room dedicated to Calder?  It's on the third floor and right next to the blue rooster.  You have seen the blue rooster right?  It's a must for 2017 if you haven't yet made the journey.

Link to the awesome Calder mobile at the National Gallery of Art
you will not be able to miss this 920 pound sculpture as you enter the East Wing.  

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Learning from an artist is as easy as learning to see the colors and shapes of their art.  However, learning to copy a work of art requires lots of skills like determining size, shape and placement.  

​It may also require to really notice details and it might mean making decisions about what to edit or leave out.  
These are very important skills in thinking to develop as young artists.  

While we might describe ourselves as "black, brown or white" the truth is much richer than these simple statements.

Our warm and cool skin tones require mixing a little blue or green along with an orange and yellow to produce the glow and depth of color that we find in our true skin coloration.  

Students took the time and patience to blend, mix and smooth out  at least four mixed colors.  While we might not be able to exactly replicate the tone with a limited oil pastel set, students came up with skin colors that were much more interesting and truthful than the already mixed "peach" or "brown" found in the box.

The very early work of Piet Mondrian shows us his love of trees.    The Woods with beech trees is a great example of how trees appear closer to us or farther away based on their size and placement on a flat surface.  It's called diminishing perspective.
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At the bottom of this article are two worksheets to help with practice of this lesson. One is for working on the computer and one for drawing on paper.

Our task was to understand and demonstrate how art can create the illusion of depth on a flat surface.  In order to achieve this we need to understand:

• ​Things that appear close are:
• 1. larger
• 2. Near the bottom edge of the paper.

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• Things that appear farther are:
• 1. smaller
• 2. Nearer the horizon line.

​We used oil pastels to make this work of art as color-filled as possible, pressing one color into another and mixing them for our own invented color schemes.

The following worksheet is designed to do on the computer on Word.  Just open the word document and click on a tree.  Drag the corner handle to enlarge or decrease the size of a tree.  Place the larger trees on the bottom lines.  Make sure the trees get progressively smaller as they go up the lines on the page.  This is a great way to get children to engage in visual thinking interactions on the computer.

The following worksheet is for printing out and drawing tree trunks to practice the principles of diminishing perspective.  Simply print out the worksheet. look at the example, follow the directions and draw.  

I was so inspired by this lesson and my own walks in the woods during this beautiful fall of ours, that I decided to make a painting of my own.  The children really inspire me with their choice of colors.  I'm not yet finished with this painting but I'm having a lot of fun playing.  Wolf Kahn used brightly imaginative colors to paint trees.  If you haven't already seen his work, it's very uplifting and he is popular in the calendar world, in case you need to brighten up a wall in your home.

This is a really fun and invigorating lesson anyone can do no matter your age.
Radiating warmth, energy and vitality can't be wrong and so to honor the colors of fall we venture on a journey of discovery with color mixing. 

We created either a sun or a marigold flower shape using the same simple steps:

• 1. paint a yellow center someplace on the canvas.
• 2. add a drop of red to the yellow paint.
  
• 3. mix the yellow and red really well.
• 4. apply this new color around the yellow center.
• 5.  add another drop of red and mix really well. Apply this new color around the main yellow color.  
• 6. repeat steps 2-4 until...
• 7.  once the orange is so dark it's almost red, wash the brush out and use just red in the next layer around the darkest orange.
• 8. add a drop of blue to the red and mix really well, paint around the color red.
• 9.  continue until you have reached the outside edge of the paper.

Interesting color facts:

• Yellow is an intellectual stimulating color.  It's also the color of happiness which is how we feel when our thoughts are positive.
• Orange is the color of emotional strength, optimism and looking on the bright side.
• Red is the color of energy, passion, action and determination.

These are all colors of fall and encouragement we need!