Paul Klee Tunisian Landscapes

All my age groups got to know one of my favorite artists of all time, the Swiss-German expressionist, abstract artist and Bauhaus teacher, Paul Klee. 

Klee completed over 9000 works of art in in short 40-year lifetime, mostly drawings and watercolors. Most are small format, drawn on paper, though Klee loved to explore working on other surfaces, such as cardboard and gessoed canvas. His work is defined as child-like, musical, expressive, fantastical, symbolic and cubist, among other things. Landscapes in blocks of carefully balanced colors, filled with a symbolic language are Klee classics - and the inspiration for this project. 

Klee loved the atmosphere, architecture and colors of North Africa and made many trips to Tunisia during his lifetime. These lengthy sojourns inspired him to produce hundreds of renditions of his geometric, color-blocked, earthy Tunisian landscapes. 

My 7-13 year olds analyzed a dozen of his works, deconstructing his use of line, shape, color and symbolism. 

He loved to use watercolor in its most ethereal form - with tons of water for that beautiful transparent wash, and for layering and glazing.

For this project, I precut small pieces of canvas and primed each piece with white gesso (like Klee).

Using watercolor is transparent washes using 'dirty colors', we began our blocky landscape using geometric shapes and earthy tones. Dirty colors are the ones that build up on the mixing palette side of the watercolor tray - just reactivate these with a moist brush and you've got the most gorgeous earthy tones. Add a hint of a clean color to liven up the muddy colors and bit, and you've got Klee's Tunisian landscape colors - earthy reds, warm oranges, brown-greens, etc. A watercolor wash simply means more water, less pigment. Painting this way allows the bright white canvas (or paper) to shine through, and makes for a soft, ethereal result.

We then analyzed his paintings for drawings of city dwellings, villages and desert life, and then drew our own fantastical layered city, connected by stairs and ladders, using fine-liner permanent marker.
The iconic Klee sun and symbolism was also incorporated. I had handouts of examples of Klee's symbols to help inspire. 

To create the soft, hazy looking sun, we took a wet brush and scrubbed the under paint away inside our sun. This rewet the paint and allowed us to then lift it up with a tissue, which revealed the white gesso underneath, and voila, we had a white sun. 

I also showed the kids how to lift watercolor up using a dry brush. The dry brush soaks up excess water, and pulls up the paint. A great little trick for achieving and controlling transparency. 

Lastly, like Klee, we mounted our canvas on colored paper, and then mounted that on cardboard, giving us two borders. 

Ages 6-9

Ages 7-12

Close-up, age 10

Close-up, age 7