In a class of 5-8 year olds we made paintings inspired by American artist Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993). We looked at Diebenkorn’s earlier work from the late 50’s early 60’s and compared and discussed the similarities we saw to his Ocean Park series done in the 70’s and 80’s. They recognized the abstracted shapes in the Ocean Park series and how they translated from his earlier more representational work. This helped them to understand how they wanted to think about landscape in their own painting. From there we used a ruler and charcoal pencil to make lines, and break up our canvas paper. They had the challenge of taping over their lines with tape. They were quite amazing in how they handled the tape. We also talked about the difference between transparent paint (wash), and opaque paint. This is a recurring theme with my students. We used a wash effect and changed colors between the shapes. The next week they removed the tape to see their beautiful results.
STUDENT WORK
