Watercolor Resist Trees inspired by Wolf Kahn

First and second grade artists looked at Wolf Kahn's paintings of trees.  Kahn is known for his work that combines Realism and Color Field (using large areas of color to create mood).  He primarily uses pastel and oil paints.  Wolf Kahn's trees demonstrate this union.  Wolf Kahn is a part time Vermont resident, so Waitsfield students can identify with his peaceful landscapes.  Thank you to The Clever Feather blog for the inspiration for this project.  

Students used single colors of oil pastel to draw the silhouettes of trees in a forest.  Next each student chose two analogous colors to paint their background.  They used the watercolor wash technique by painting their papers with water first, then observed the resist created by the oil pastels.  

Here are some of Wolf Kahn's tree paintings:

Here are the students' Wolf Kahn tree watercolor resist paintings:

New Wild Beasts inspired by Les Fauves added to previous post

Click here to see more Wild Beasts by Fifth and Sixth Grade artists.

More Jim Dine Hearts

Click Here to see more hearts inspired by artist Jim Dine.

Cheap Art Manifesto from Bread and Puppet Theater

Our Bread and Puppet artists-in-residence gave me this Cheap Art Manifesto poster on their last day at Waitsfield Elementary.  I love it!  

Bread and Puppet Artists-in-Residence... What we loved

Students used watercolor, Sharpie markers and colored pencils to respond to what they loved and what they learned during our time with our artists-in-residence from Bread and Puppet Theater.  

Many artists drew their favorite parts of the final pageant, which showed our community's response to Hurricane Irene in August 2011. 

Students in Bird Costumes

The River Monster

River Monster! 

Katherine from B+P

Students dancing as the River Monster

Houses and a toilet (!) getting washed down the river

River Monster

Singing songs and playing games

Katherine and Lily from B+P

River Monster

Woman in a boat floating on the river

The River Monster with lots of students inside

Rainsticks

Dancing with rainsticks

Potato people represent the population of the community 

Lily taught us a warm-up that used the Spanish words for body parts

The monster comes out from beneath the river

TEAMWORK!