January has come and gone, and so has a new art lesson! This month we explored the world of Henri Matisse’s collages and one of his most famous paintings. Henri is known for colorful compositions. His use of bold, bright colors and simple shapes led his to become the of the art movement fauvism. The kindergarteners had a great time printing a project based on Henri’s Polynesia, The Sky, and the Lower Elementary class created their own versions of his classic painting The Goldfish.
To begin their printmaking project, the kindergarten students learned about negative and positive space. Negative space is the empty air or space around the main subject in a work of art, while positive space is the main subject itself. We studied Henri’s work Polynesia, The Sky and picked out the positive spaces that we wanted to include in our own art. Each student traced two different shapes onto a piece of peel-and-stick foam, and cut them out. Then, they put the shape on a piece of cardboard. They also used the left scrap to recreate the negative space of each shape. This left them with four printing plates. The kindergarteners used two shades of blue to print their images, and their work was complete!
The Lower Elementary class learned all about space and composition while creating their own versions of The Goldfish. First, we discussed the difference between background and foreground. Then, they drew their own composition on a black piece of paper by spacing out a background first, then adding the goldfish bowl to the foreground. The last step was painting everything to bring their work to life!
