We were trying to go around the world with our art, and for South America we decided to do a "
Rainforest" inspired picture. We talked about how
rainforests are colorful & full of life. We also talked to the students about how things in the
rainforest for sure overlap! The first step was to have the students draw their trees. We made sure that they placed the trees at different levels on their page & that the branches overlapped at the top. Then we had the students draw a variety of patterns in their trees(encouraging them to first break the tree into sections to get more patterns into each tree). Next the students traced everything with Sharpie. Then students did a watercolor wash over the whole page(we limited them to 3 colors & encouraged them to overlap the colors...but to keep it very watery/washy!!). We used liquid watercolor, but standard watercolors would work to if they kept it watery!! Last step was to go over the trees with marker. We really pushed them to color each section individually & to not cross over the Sharpie outlines.
I'm always on the hunt for new resources on contemporary art. Lets face it, what we find in most of our schools is nothing but "The Masters". There is nothing wrong with that, but art did not stop a century ago! It is alive & well, and I want to my students to know this...and see this!!!
