Painting the Great Outdoors I: Day 2

Friday, 17 July 2015

On Day 2 of our summer Painting the Great Outdoors course, we continued to develop our skills for painting in the great outdoors! Click here to see what we did on Day 1.

We began the morning with some simple drawing activities to get us looking at our surroundings more closely. Drawing with one continuous line, or with the hand we don't normally draw with.

We also experimented with charcoal to draw trees. One continuous line... Beautiful charcoal trees...

We then foraged for sticks to make some new drawing implements. Taping charcoal to sticks helped us to use charcoal in new and interesting ways, and use our bodies more in our drawing.

The activity became more and more physical. We used our tools to draw over the collaborative painting we made yesterday. This piece is quite special. We created some lovely effects with the painted background...

We then experimented with painting onto calico squares creating a border for these small fabric pieces. We drew with oil pastel then painted on top. We then used paper towels to dab off the wet paint where the oil pastel was to create simple layering of different media. These little pieces were both vibrant and delicate.

After lunch we each used our own canvas board to amalgamate all the techniques we had learnt with ideas from our imaginations and surroundings to create a final piece. We worked with focus and imagination creating pieces that told a story or represented our surroundings. We referenced memories and experiences to create very personal pieces.

As we finished we used all our spare paint to work together on a final collaborative piece. We had great fun literally sloshing paint around on a giant square of calico!

We then gathered to share our work with parents in a giant show and tell. We went home tired, filthy and happy! A great day's work.