Basquiat Birds with 7-10 Group

Matt Sesow

Today I thought I would teach the kids about one of my favourite artists, Basquiat. When searching on pinterest for Basquiat inspired lessons, I found this amazing image by artist Matt Sesow. 

I decided to stick with Basquiat for the history lesson component anyway because there is an obvious influence in Sesow's work and he is after all one of my faves. The kids just could not understand why I liked him! I guess kids are told not to scribble from a young age so they would see this as the wrongest, silliest art ever. 

We started the project by drawing expressive birds on A3 paper with pencil. They then chose three colours to paint their birds and backgrounds. Once the paint dried we got some white and black oil pastels and haphazardly drew around the shapes of the birds. We then added areas of colour with soft pastels and named our birds. I wrote the names next to birds in the most Basquiat-esque fashion I could conjure. 

I love this drawing below by the youngest in the class who has just turned six. He is the happiest, funniest little boy and I love teaching him and seeing the work he produces!

Yayoi Kusama: From Here to Infinity

I absolutely love this book by Sarah Suzuki and illustrated by Ellen Weinstein about my favourite artist Yayoi Kusama. The art is so beautiful and Suzuki explains the difficulties in the artist's life in a really sensitive, kid-friendly way. I've done several Kusama-inspired projects that you can find on this blog <3

James Rizzi inspired paintings with the 7-10 group

https://prezi.com/7gyvd2ugk8v8/james-rizzi/

I've been wanting to do a James Rizzi inspired project with my 7-10 group for a while now. I love the  energy of the bright colours and anthropomorphic buildings in his paintings. He made it look like all the buildings, birds, planes, cars, space ships and people were dancing together on the street. I also love the artwork he did for Tom Tom Club and recommend having this song on repeat while you do Rizzi-inspired artworks with your kids!

We started today's lesson with an excellent prezi I found, that I've linked above. The kids absolutely love learning about new artists and the different worlds they are/were apart of. When I showed them this presentation they were literally 'ooh-ing' and 'ahh-ing' at Rizzi's work. It's such a great way to get them excited about making art inspired by the artist of the day.

I had been collecting lots of cardboard in preparation for this project and painted all of it with a thick white base coat so that when they kids were ready to paint they could get straight down to it. Like with most lessons, I got the kids to first practice drawing their own buildings, faces and Rizzi features (birds, cars, suns, moons etc.)

Once they each had an A4 page of buildings and Rizzi features, they got to work dividing an A3 sized cardboard page into day and night. The day side being light blue and the night side being dark blue. Next, we started drawing buildings on other pieces of cardboard, first with pencil then over the top with thick, black marker. We then drew windows and faces on the buildings and glued them onto our backgrounds. Luckily it was a super hot day so our backgrounds dried in the sun real quick. 

For the finishing touches the kids coloured their Rizzi features in with coloured marker and cut and pasted them onto their work. I love the results!