Painting With 2nd Graders

2010-05-20T10:58:00.000-07:00

Last week I had some real fun...

I was invited to do a painting demonstration for Mrs. Crisp's 2nd grade class at Morningside Elementary School. I spent a week agonizing over what I could do to teach them some art principles and also make it fun for them. I decided to talk about Abstraction and Color and then do a painting showing how to apply what we talked about. The fun twist was to let everyone in the class, including Mrs. Crisp, paint some of the painting.

For reference, I picked this photo to work from. It has lots of fun color and lend it's self to a loose, abstracted approach.

After sketching in the picture I had each student, one by one, come up and apply paint to the painting. I was amazed at the different way each child approached their opportunity to paint; some were calculating and precise, some were afraid of making a mistake, and some were bold and confident. I encouraged each one of them to splash on the color and not to be intimidated by what they were doing, because we were abstracting the subject and not trying to paint a photograph.

By the end of the hour we had a pretty good painting going. I put some final touches on it and now here is the finished product.

I'm going to have a print of the painting made for each student and sign it. They can sign their name above mine and take it home with them. The finished painting will hang in their classroom till the end of the year so they can see what they did and show their parents how talented they are.

As I said at the beginning... It was really fun!

Thanks, Mrs. Crisp's class, for inviting me.

George

OPA - National Jurried Show

2010-05-08T16:55:00.000-07:00

Hi All,

I have just returned from the Oil Painters Of America's 19^th Annual National Juried Show. All I can say is WOW!!!! They had over 2,600 entries and accepted only 200... Lucky me, I was one of the artists that was accepted.

This year the show is being held at the prestigious LEGACY GALLERY in Scottsdale, AZ.

It is a great honor to be included in the show and to meet some of the top representational artists in the country.

My painting is titled "In the Shadow of the Mountain." It is a 24" x 30" oil on linen.

This painting of a farm in Liberty, Utah is one of my favorites. The mountain is a key element of the picture that is not seen, but it's shadow, the dominant force within the painting, will soon envelop the farm and affect all within. Slowly it will replace the warm afternoon light with winter's defining cold darkness.

To see the entire show visit...

Legacy Gallery
7178 Main Street
Scottsdale, Arizona 85251
Phone 480.945.1113
Fax 480.945.8818
www.legacygallery.com

Or to view online click this link
www.legacygallery.com/events/opa/?

Painting with George . . .

Painting With 2nd Graders

OPA - National Jurried Show