This week’s project is of a FLOWER using MIXED MEDIA (including COLLAGE) as the medium.
In this picture, your child explored:
- Collage and mixed media
- Choices in art
- Composition, including symmetry and design
THE PROJECT:
Flower
In preparation for Valentine’s Day, your child created a card featuring a lovely flower. Typically during a class session the teacher and all students will create together a specific drawing. This class was somewhat different; instead of the entire class creating the same flower, children were given wide latitude in creating their own, unique flower.
For some children, this is exciting; for others, who are hesitant of creativity and enjoy the structure of following the teacher’s work, this may have been more challenging. This project encouraged children to carefully consider their composition before beginning, as well as emphasizing lessons in symmetry and design, complementary color schemes, and even motor skills (cutting paper to create collage elements).
THE MEDIUM:
Collage & Mixed Media
Most children enjoy creating collages because of the myriad of possibilities and options for unique compositions. Collage is the perfect mixture of messiness and creativity to engage a child’s interest. In this picture, the primary collage element was paper, in varying colors and textures, but the possibilities for collage are endless. Mixing many elements – anything from feathers and buttons to paper and string – will keep children intrigued and entertained for hours! Collage can often be a very “green” form of art, as well, and was one of the many art styles we highlighted in our 2009 Save the Earth with Art summer camp.
One famous collage artist of the early 20th century was Henri Matisse. Matisse was a French painter who turned to collage when his health began to fail. Matisse wrote, “The paper cutouts allow me to draw with color. For me, it is a simplification. Instead of drawing an outline and then filling in with color - with one modifying the other - I draw directly in color … It is not a starting point, it is a completion.” Mattise’s final and most works evolved into a collection of mixed-media collages. Matisse arranged brightly colored paper cutouts into intense compositions, and added text in his own handwriting to produce a book entitled Jazz, a powerful visual representation of jazz music.
If your child enjoyed this week’s collage project, enjoy this Matisse-inspired project with them.
Mixing mediums (the materials used to create a picture) is a fun technique to create contrast in a picture. Encourage your child to try more multimedia projects at home. Mixing mediums encourages children to think carefully about the effect created by different mediums – the contrast between the texture created by markers and that created by chalk, for example, can be better understood by children when the elements are presented side-by-side.
Ask Your Child:
· To explain how he planned his flower before creating it.
· To explain various design elements (symmetry, color, etc) within her flower.
· To discuss other elements (besides paper) which could be effectively introduced into his collage. (For example, buttons make great flower centers.)
