On 2/11/2009, at William Paterson University in our Creativity and Play Class, we read Art Dog by Thacher Hurd. Next, we worked with black tempera first, on large white butcher block paper, exploring the many marks created by various tools from Home Depot, the classroom and elsewhere. Next we worked wet into wet paint using white tempera as our background then working into it with very small brushes. We talked about clouds and the sky as a point of departure. We also experimented with postive/negative space using Painter's Tape and tempera paint applied with brayers to the construction paper. Finally we created our own paint with 1/2 shaving cream; 1/2 Elmer's White All Purpose Glue, and food coloring and tried applying it with make-shift palette knives.
The Elements of Art: Line; Color; Texture: Shape: Form; Space: Value.
Other books on Paint and Painting: The Artist by John Bianchi; The Painter Who Loved Chickens by Olivier Dunrea; Little Blue and Little Yellow by Leo Leonni; I Spy Two Eyes by Mickelthwait; Discover Great Paintings by Lucy Mickelthwait; Camille and the Sunflowers by Lawrence Anholt; The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Manus Pinkwater; The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush by Tomie dePaola; Tye May and the Magic Brush by Molly Garrett Bang; Experience and Art/Teaching Children to Paint by Nancy R. Smith
Some Painting Words: Drip; Stain; Glide; Slide; Brushstroke; Thin Line; Thick Line; Cover; Composition; Area; Imagine; Create; Smudge; Center; Top; Bottom; Horizontal; Diagonal; Repetition; Pattern; Warm Colors; Cool Colors; Tints; Tones; Value
Ten Lessons the Arts Teach By Elliot Eisner
1) The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail.
2) The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.
3) The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.
4) The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.
5) The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor number exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.
6) The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties.
7) The arts teach students to think through and within a material. All art forms employ some means through which images become real.
8) The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.
9) The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.
10) The arts ’ position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important.
SOURCE: Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press. Available from NAEA Publications. Copyright Information | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use Copyright © 2007 National Art Education Association. All rights reserved.
