Group Painting with kids at All-Star Academy

What an awesome day!  The All-Star Academy had an open house/carnival and invited me to lead a kids art activity to help promote my upcoming camps.  

I decided to start a collaborative project in mixed media.  I needed to keep it simple for kids of all ages, as well as their parents, so I chose a circle theme,  inspired by Kandinsky's circle paintings. 

I set up a table and invited everyone as they came in to create mini circle 'paintings' in oil pastels on 5" squares of sheer paper.  I asked them to either make concentric circles or  over lapping circles  and to completely cover the paper in strong color.  These will be layered in rows onto our painting after an underpainting is created.  Mixed media is all about layers...layers peeking through layers!

I wanted to give them an opportunity to experiment with several techniques so I set up stations for a few kids at a time to help start the underpainting.  One table had magazine images which could be collaged onto the gessoed plywood panel we were using.  Another table had several containers of acrylic paints thinned with clear painting medium (to keep them translucent). 
The kids REALLY enjoyed the kinetic experience of sweeping paint across the canvas and watching it drip.  Jacob even grabbed a second brush and painted with two hands!

As a bonus for the littlest kids, I set up a couple of easels for tempera painting since the supplies were already there.  I was reminded of how much I enjoyed painting at arts festivals as a kid!

Check out this short video of the young artists participating: Group Painting Project.

To be continued................