Finger Painting & Texture Collage

For this art project, we were to finger paint a scene using different shades and tints, as well as projecting foreground and background. Here I painted a scene based off of my favorite place, the Missouri beach/river 20 minutes outside of Gettysburg. I have spent almost every summer there since I was old enough to walk, so it was an instinct to portray this image. 

This art project was one of my favorite so far. We were to paint wet pieces of large white paper by mixing tempra paint to make different colors. We were encouraged to use different strokes and textures. The painted papers were then layed on a drying rack while we sketched the picture we planned on making with the colored paper we just made. Before the next class, we were to iron the papers flat to make them easier to use. We could then use any colored paper we made or someone else had made in order to create out picture. 

My inspiration for this picture came from the first paper that I made with the paint, which was my bright pink-red-orange flamingo paper. The animal immediately came to me after I finished painting. For different textures, I used the end of my paint brush to create the grass, and a sponge to create the background with white clouds. 

Extension Activity

To expand on these two projects, I would have children create a giant collage onto one of the bulletin boards in our room. They would have to work together to make the picture make sense, but each student would get to create at least one item if not more for the board. We would create this scene by using paper that they would paint, just like how we made the paper for the second painting and finger painting as well.