Our 4-6 year olds discovered the bold colors and free drawing style of Dutch COBRA artist Karel (1922-2006). Appel was friends with Jean Dubuffet, our inspiration from previous weeks, and was equally inspired by the artwork of children and spontaneous, unfettered drawing styles.
We taped the edges of our multi-purpose artist paper with artist tape, to reveal a clean border when done. I find this makes a huge difference to the overall look and quality of our final work, particularly with little kids art, which can be quite messy. It's an instant upgrade.
After discussing Appel's use of color, his shapes and his subject matter (mainly portraits and people) we drew our own free-style figure and broke it up into parts, or sections. Following Appel's style, we filled our entire paper with our subject using oil pastel and colored it in pure, flat color blocks with liquid tempera paints.
Liquid tempera is NOT my favorite medium. While it's very easy for young kids to use due to its high flow nature, I find it's too chalky, streaky, and does't provide the kind of coverage I want from my paints. We ended up having to paint our figure with two coats of paint, which, for young kids, can be annoying.
To add extra boldness and 'pop', we outlined our figures in black paint using a small brush.
So playful and cute.
