Art By the Book, Sort Of

The same day that I received a book by MaryAnn F. Kohl and Kim Solga called Discovering Great Artists in the mail from a catalog order, I also received an opportunity to teach Art at a small private school nearby.

I had ordered the book to use in our homeschool, and I had done a lot of creative projects with various groups, but I had never taught in a traditional school.

The book is written for families. The school had about 100 students in K-8. Could I put the two together?

Yes.

This book works both ways, and I’ll show you how.

On the first day, I told the kids that when I was a student like them, I thought I wasn’t “good at art” because I couldn’t draw realistically. But through the years, I learned on my own that I am very artistic.

It’s easier and more enjoyable for me to cut something like an ocean liner, for example, out of paper freehand than it is for me to draw it. I had a piece of paper in hand and cut while I was talking, ending up with a pretty good likeness of the Titanic. And I let the scraps fall to the floor as I cut– this Art teacher is not afraid of creative mess.

It was a good way for the students to get acquainted with me and get a feel for how Art class would be that year.

I wanted each of my great-artists-in-the-making to have a portfolio so they could see their weekly projects as a collection and not just a project here and there. We were going to need something that could hold chunky projects, too, not just flat paper, so I hit upon the idea of making them from poster board, folded and stapled to form a big flat-ish box.

I bought some white poster board, experimented, and came up with a design. I marked the folding and cutting lines so the kids could assemble them, brought in a couple staplers that I had and borrowed some from the school office.

The one in the picture above is an oldie of my daughter’s and the only picture I have. For the sample below, I used two shades of blue together so the inside and outside would be easy to see. I used card stock here, but the process is the same with poster board. Note on step three that the corners are NOT cut out, just slit.

The first profile in Discovering Great Artists is Giotto. As with others of his time, he had to make his own paint from things like clay, berries, even insects, mixed with egg. Dried up bugs?! You can imagine the kids’ faces, right? I love that.

The book tells how to make your own egg tempera with ground chalk and then suggests doing a painting. We put the two things together and painted the portfolios.

At home with just your own kids, it’s not hard to share a batch of egg tempera. Each color could be in a separate cup or small bowl, maybe an egg carton. But with 15 or so kids at a time, I needed something else.

Of course individual paint palette trays would be ideal but at that time I couldn’t find any for less than a few bucks each, plus even if I had 20 or so, I’d have to wash them out between classes.

So I bought two, put a piece of aluminum foil in between and pressed them. I was able to stamp out all the disposable palettes I needed.

For the chalk, the book suggests crushing sticks of it with a round rock. I needed a lot so I did it in my mini food processor. It worked, and my food processor still does too, but if I want to do this again with a group, I think I’ll buy a small bag of plaster instead. If you want to simulate dried up crushed bugs, and who wouldn’t, consider your spices – maybe some crunched up dried rosemary?

The kids used spoons to fill their palette scoops with the egg mixture from a common bowl or two on each table. The ground up chalks were in old spice jars I had. The kids sprinkled on the six colors of chalk and mixed them with coffee stirrers.

At home with a family you could do the chalk grinding and egg mixture making together. If you have enough time in an enrichment class, you could do it there too. For the classrooms, though, I prepped.

Periodically through the year I reminded the kids that they should be adding their projects to their portfolios. At the end of the year, we put a timeline of the great artists we had discovered on the inside cover of their portfolios.

We eventually went through almost all the artists in that book, plus some from earlier periods and some special units on architecture and photography.

Working with a limited budget to get what you need from what you have is an art itself.

Discover more posts about art instruction here soon.