Kids class--abstract

Our kids class did a small and simple abstract idea that was a simplified version of what Sandy taught us about the "good white shape." I'd give credit to the artist who teaches this, I think his name is John Salminen, but I'm terrible with names.

We started with four items...a Coke glass, a kids curly straw, an egg beater, and a clothespin. We drew each on a 7 x 9 piece of paper, filling the whole space. Then we redrew each one onto a piece of watercolor paper, rearranging the shapes to our own design.

Next, we miskited out shapes we wanted to keep white and spattered with miskit. We tried to find a "path a mouse could take" that could begin or end on three sides of the paper; as if the mouse could walk a maze from one side of the paper to the other. After the miskit dried we applied a layer of light to midvalue colors that we liked.

After the first layer dried, we put in areas of darkest dark of different sizes, using our drawn shapes as guides. We don't want to overwhelm the picture with too much dark. Make sure some of the darkest darks are right next to the white areas. Then we painted in some of our shapes with more of a middle value.

We removed the miskit and made adjustments for the way we wanted our painting to look. See some of the kids' work in next post.