The Tree of Life, Klimt

In this session we will be looking at the more symbolic and decorative work by Klimt as a contest to the birch trees.

The children will be recreating the tree from The Tree of Life, Stoclet Frieze 1909.

The patterns and decoration from 'The Kiss' and 'Adele Bloch Bauer 1' can form a great inspiration for wax resist work. Use metallic crayons or oil pastels to create the patterns and shapes, then wash over some watercolour or thin poster paint.
or

Make printing blocks from potato in squares, rectangles, circles and triangles. Use metallic paint to create patterns on a coloured background.

Here is the link on Deep Space Sparkle for this lesson.

Birch Trees and Klimt

Although the Klimt paintings are not the original inspiration for this session, I thought it was a great way to introduce his landscapes.

Birch in a Forest 1903

 

Buchenhain 1902

Farmhouse with birch trees 1903

He is most famous for the highly decorative paintings on which he used gold leaf.

For those who missed the session, here is the link to used for the idea. Deep Space Sparkle

Gustav The Giraffe

One of our first sessions was looking at collage and pattern. The inspiration was a picture called Gustav the Giraffe by Elizabeth St. Hilaire Nelson.

She is an American collage artist. Unlike most collage artists, who 'find' the paper for their work, she creates her own. She uses paint and printing to transform old text, music manuscript and textured paper. These are then layered onto a base painting.
You can see her work here

We drew a giraffe and used coloured paper to make the blotches of the markings. We then added patterns onto each patch.

 The more experienced artists drew the giraffes and using pens patterned the patches making them 'darker' in value near the bottom and paler near the head, like these.

Tottington Library Art Group

Welcome to the place to find out what art sessions will be coming up.

Our next session will be based on Kandinsky and in particular his painting Colour Study- Squares and Concentric Circles (1913)
We will be doing a collage based on this work, so you will need to bring scissors and glue. I have heaps of coloured paper for the children to use.