Inspired by Paul Klee's "Castle and Sun"

 

First and second grade artists looked at "Castle and Sun" by Swiss artist Paul Klee.  Before we learned the title of this painting, we talked about what we saw- cities, villages, crayons, moon, houses, and of course a castle.  

This painting is made up of geometric shapes.  These are shapes that follow rules.  The other type of shapes are called organic shapes.  These are shapes that don't follow rules.

We used cut paper geometric shapes to build our castles or villages. We imagined that the paper shapes were building blocks and figured out how to fill the page and add details. The final step was to outline and add detail in black or white.

Rex Ray Collage

Rex Ray is a contemporary collage artist from San Francisco.  He started working as a graphic designer, but expanded to collage when he felt he needed to infuse more creativity and freedom into his work.  

There are many connections between Rex Ray's work and Henri Matisse's Collages.  What similarities and differences do you notice between their work? Click here to see more artwork we've done that was inspired by Matisse!

Third and fourth grade artists looked at Rex Ray's work as inspiration for their own collages. We identified four elements that we noticed in many of Rex Ray's pieces. They are:

1. Warm and Cool Colors

2. Texture

3. Organic Shapes

4. Layering, Unity and Composition

We started by painting warm and cool colored papers and collecting textured images from magazines.  Then students used Rex Ray's art to inspire an Organic Shape Doodle.

Collecting #shapes and #doodles inspired by #rexray for our #collages by #gradesthreeandfour #Waitsfieldschool

A photo posted by Nora (@artclass_allday) on Dec 8, 2015 at 11:31am PST

Then students created their own collages based on Rex Ray's work. Here are some examples of Rex Ray's Collages:

 

Here's a picture of collage-making in-progress.  When we do collage, I try to remember to "Embrace the Chaos!"

#collage inspired by #rexray #inprogress #gradesthreeandfour #Waitsfieldschool

A photo posted by Nora (@artclass_allday) on Dec 18, 2015 at 11:05am PST

Here are our finished collages! After students photographed their collages, they painted a layer of acrylic gel medium over their work.