Category Archives: painting

March 28, 2015 · 10:11 am

Painted Eggs 3

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Seems I lost my mojo for a while, but I’m back with some painted eggs, and looking forward to sharing all sorts of projects with you. Artist Gustav Klimt provided inspiration for this year’s batch of eggs, as did Aesop’s fable, The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg.  Klimt was an Austrian painter (1862-1918), who was probably best know for his golden phase, which included incredible paintings like The Kiss and Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. Aesop’s fable provides a classic lesson about greed, with plenty of versions online to share with your little ones. Grab your gold and happy painting!

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May 26, 2014 · 1:28 pm

Folded Canvas Painting

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Hungarian born artist, Simon Hantaï, was an important figure in European art until his death in 2008. He spent most of his life in France, and was best known for his abstract work. His desire to move away from conventional methods of painting, lead to a process called pliage. Hantaï invented this technique, which involved folding and crumpling unstretched canvas, before adding bold and vibrant colours to it. This enabled him to continue exploring patterns and repetitiveness, present in his earlier work, while focussing on the importance of white space and the idea of chance.

This project is inspired by Hantaï’s pliage work, and very simply explores the idea of painting and creating art in a non conventional way, by scrunching canvasses and having fun.

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May 12, 2014 · 9:59 am

Spring Flowers

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Even though spring appears to have finally arrived, I still have this nagging feeling that the warmer weather is just temporary, and the fact that I ditched my socks yesterday may not last. Clearly, the lasting effects of a traumatic winter are lingering, so a good dose of flower making should help.

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April 7, 2014 · 3:31 pm

Spicing Up Your Legal Tender

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Brazilian artist and designer, Andre Levy, will change the way you look at coins. His creative interventions in Tales You Lose, involve embellishing and transforming heads of state into popular characters and people, leaving you wondering why you never thought of doing that yourself! It may also leave you curious about who is chosen to be on a coin, and about the legalities of altering money, even for non-fraudulent purposes like art. In this case, the acrylic paint you’ll be using can easily be scraped away, allowing you to continue using your coins as legitimate currency. But if you prefer to save the Queen of England sporting a new, hot pink coiffe, you can do that too.

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March 23, 2014 · 10:48 pm

Painted Eggs 2

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Egg painting season is upon us, and this year, my daughter decided Andy Warhol was the way to go. Warhol was born in Pittsburgh in 1928, and like Roy Lichtenstein, who inspired these eggs, became an important figure in the Pop Art movement. His use of everyday objects, and popular images from celebrity culture and the world of advertising, took art in a new direction, making it less elitist and more of a celebration of “consumerism and mass culture.” Warhol left us with unforgettable images of Campbell’s Soup cans, Brillo boxes, and plenty of famous faces to use as inspiration for this year’s batch of eggs.

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February 3, 2014 · 4:43 pm

Recycled House Paint Art

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Artist, Cassandra Tondro, has come up with a fabulous, fun way of recycling house paint. She gives it a second life by using it to make abstract art, while at the same time, helping the environment. She’ll also be inadvertently helping you to clear out that little corner where you store your paint containers, because I can’t be the only one who hangs on to the stuff, but rarely ends up using it.

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February 5, 2013 · 12:09 am

Watercolour Painting With Salt and Glue

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There’s a very cool image making the rounds on Pinterest, from a blog called Chalk In My Pocket. It’s made using watercolour paint, glue and salt, and involves squirting, painting and sprinkling with the kind of freedom that kids love. It also makes you want to try it out yourself. While I’ve explored salt paintings before, adding glue, which acts as a resist, creates wonderful texture. And isolating small areas by cutting out shapes, opens up all sorts of possibilities.

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September 22, 2012 · 10:43 pm

Painted Pages

Pages in old books, newspapers and magazines can provide beautiful canvases for painting. Tracking them down in yard sales and second hand shops is fairly easy, and with a little watercolour paint, they can be turned into something worthy of framing. I recently saw some beautiful examples in a store, and thought it was finally time to give it a try.

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September 9, 2012 · 9:11 am

Gerhard Richter Inspired Plexiglass Painting

Gerhardt Richter recently had a phenomenal show at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. This German artist has explored and mastered many styles including abstract, pop art, minimalism and photo-realism, where he creates paintings derived from photographs and adds his trademark blur. His work sells for prices higher than any other living artist, and is considered by many to be the most important working artist today. I loved his series of lacquer-on-glass paintings, and thought it would be interesting for kids to explore the idea of creating layers on plexiglass.

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July 8, 2012 · 11:33 am

Pareidolia

It sounds like a disorder of some kind, but it’s nothing more than the ability to see a cat in the cloud above. Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (usually an image or sound) being perceived as significant. In other words, when you see a little face in a light socket, an animal in a cloud, or a growling mouth in the front grille of a car, that’s pareidolia. It’s about the mind trying to make sense of the abstract, and it’s a great concept to explore with children.

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