Art is Messy – action painting with yarn

I used acrylic paint, yarn, thread, water and clothespins.

Monoprint of a section of unfinished action painting.

Completed action painting laying flat to dry.

The left over parts of an art activity can be interesting too!

Happy Earth Day!

Today’s art project video can be viewed at Art Out of Anything on FB and @artoutofanything on Instagram.

With this project we continue to offer art activities that you can do at home or in the classroom with much of what you already have on hand so you can work with what you have!

Action painting is exactly what it sounds like, painting with movement.

Jackson Pollock was a painter know for his action paintings. You can see him painting and hear him talking about his artistic process in this video – SFMOMA – Paintings have a life of their own.

You can also visit his house on the east end of Long Island in NY or virtually at Pollock-Krasner House. His wife, Lee Krasner was also an amazing artist.

Pollock’s paintings are not only colorful and lively, they also contain fractals, which is another example of how math can be found everywhere in art.

Today we will make our own action painting using yarn and paint.

Project Steps – the steps for this project work best being viewed but I will give you the abridged version here.

gather your materials – I used acrylic paint, pieces of yarn and embroidery thread, clothespins, cups, paper and paint.
cover you work space with an old sheet or tablecloth or even a garbage bag.
pour paint into cups, add a splash of water if paint is too thick
clothespins are used to pick up yarn pieces and dip them into the paint cups. Make sure to coat the yarn as much as possible with the paint.
once your yarn is ready, lift it out of the cup with the clothespin and drop it onto the paper that is your canvas. You can also drag the yarn on the paper or shake it so it create splatters.
I would suggest leaving the yarn on the paper until you have completed your piece so that the paint has time to soak into the paper. This also creates a more cohesive finished piece.
once you feel your piece is done, remove the yarn using the clothespins or your fingers. You can even use chopsticks or tweezers!

You can lay your finished masterpiece flat to dry or hang it. If you have runny paint on your piece, your painting will change as the paint drips while it is hanging. Just be sure to place some newspaper or another garbage bag under the hanging painting to catch the drips.

I mentioned the word fractals earlier. A fractal is a never ending pattern. They can be found in math equations and in the world all around us from tree branches to snowflakes. Scientists who have analyzed Pollock’s seemingly random placement of paint, have discovered these never ending patterns in his work. Can you think of how that would happen when he was dripping and dropping paint and lots of other objects into his paintings without any obvious intentional placement? I have my own theory but you have to watch the project video for that!

Here are some links to really interesting articles about their theories and what they found –

Discover Magazine

A Scholarly Blog

Here are some interactive sites where you can see how fractals work and create your own –

Experimenting with Fractals, Math Fairy, Kids , Interactive Fractal Machine

Here are some links to online drawing tools to create your own, not so messy action painting –

Scratch MIT , Nick jr. Drawing

I hope you enjoy getting messy and exploring the wonderful world of fractals and art.

Follow us on FB and Instagram @artoutofanything for weekly videos and activities. You can also contact us at eljaiekart@gmail.com or direct message us at FB and Instagram if you are interested in remote professional development workshops or homeschooling workshops.

Thanks for visiting and keep creating!

Patty

Collagraphy and The Scientific Method

Hey all!

Today we are using the scientific method to determine which style of collagraph works best for printing.

A collagraph (sometimes spelled collograph) is a method of printmaking that involves adhering materials to a board or sturdy surface to build up a printing surface.

I decided to use the scientific method to explore different materials and printing pigments.

Observation – I have observed, by doing, that you can make prints (copies) of designs by using many different materials.
Questions – Can I make prints from cardboard, hot glue and foam sheets? Which pigment will make the best print; an ink pad, acrylic paint or lipstick?
Hypothesis – which combination of these materials will give me the most successful print?
Prediction – I think the hot glue will give me the cleanest print while the foam sheet will give me the best print all around. I think the cardboard will not give me a clear print. I also think the lipstick will give me the best color of all.
Test the prediction – I chose collagraphy as the printing technique to test my predication because I can use materials I have on hand.

TEST – you can watch the entire video of the process at https://www.facebook.com/artoutofanything/

Here’s a sneak peek of the process –

I used hot glue to create designs on a piece of cardboard. This does take a little practice as you have to make sure your design is raised and not flat. I also cut up a piece of adhesive backed foam sheet into an abstract design and adhered it to another piece of cardboard and then used cut up cardboard as another design. These will be my 3 printing plates.

Next, I experimented with 3 different pigments in the form of paint, lipstick and an ink pad. The amount of pigment placed on the printing plates is very important; too much and you get a gloppy, messy print, too little and you don’t get a clear print.

Here are the results. Which one do you think made the best print? Which print is clear, complete and clean? Was my hypothesis correct?

I used the ink pad on the cardboard plate

On the left plate I used lipstick. On the right plate I used acrylic paint

In my video, you can see some other techniques I tried while testing out my hypothesis!

You can also find some easy printmaking techniques in keeping with our motto “work with what you have”, at Tinkerlab.

Be sure to visit and follow me @artoutofanything on Instagram and FB.

Here’s the link again for the full length video – Collagraphs and The Scientific Method

Let’s see what other collagraphs you can come up with!

See you on Thursday and keep creating!

Thanks for visiting,

Patty

Math with Mondrian

$Mondrian math supplies$

Hey everyone!

Today I am working on my favorite art/math project! Using Piet Mondrian’s work to understand math is nothing new. His geometric masterpieces lend themselves to learning so many math concepts. Even as I was preparing my samples for today, I came up with a few new variations that I am looking forward to trying once we get back to the classroom!

Supplies – This is a list of only some of the materials I used. You can simplify or expand as you like. The more you experiment, the better!

Paper, scissors, construction paper, ruler, glue, colored pencils, markers, colored sand, paint, Popsicle sticks, cardboard, graph paper etc.

You can create your own version of a Mondrian using paper and pencil, colored pencil, markers etc. You can also make a textured Mondrian by using sand, glitter, pop sticks and cardboard.

Steps – using a straight edge, draw rectangles and squares on your canvas (drawing surface, cardboard). Refer to Piet Mondrian’s Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow for inspiration. Here’s a link to some more of his work and about the artist – Mondrian for Kids – Slideshare

Once you have filled your canvas with the composition, choose your colors and add them. As you can see, the artist left white space and always used bold black lines to break up the canvas. Of course, you can be as creative as you like and add different colors too, just not green. Do you know why Mondrian didn’t use the color green?

Math activities – apart from the obvious geometry found in Mondrian’s work, we also see perpendicular lines, straight lines, intersecting and parallel lines. There is definitely one super easy math concept that your Mondrian inspired work can help you learn.

Finding the Area of a square or rectangle–

Supplies – graph paper ( print some out here free printable graph paper online), colored pencils, markers of crayons, ruler or any straight edge.

Steps – draw your Mondrian inspired artwork directly on the graph paper. before you color in your shapes, challenge yourself to find the area by counting the squares up (vertical) and across (horizontal) of the squares and rectangles. You can multiply (area = length x width or width x height) or even count each square in the shape. Here is a fun link to use for practice – Square Area Interactive.

Mondrian has inspired so many math activities and you can see a few of them at the links below, and enjoy some other math activities with artists like Alexander Calder and Pablo Picasso!

Math with Mondrian, Calder and more

Here’s a really tough one to challenge yourself! –

Advanced Mondrian Math Puzzles

I’d love to see your Mondrian inspired work and how you extended this activity.

Google Arts and Culture App – Mondrian Composition with Grid #1

The Google Arts and Culture app has so many activities available that it’s impossible to list everything! Their content also changes so be sure to check it out the link quick!!

Be sure to check out the video for this project and post your creations @artoutofanything on FB and Instagram.

See you next week , stay healthy and create!

Patty

Yes! You can play ball in the house!

Hi again!

Today we learned about shapes using paper and tape. When I make art I love to use re purposed materials. Anything that is lying around the house is a potential new art supply.

Having a look in my recycling bin, I grabbed a few sheets of newspaper and made some pretty awesome newspaper balls! But they’re not just newspaper, they are soccer balls, basketballs, baseball, bowling balls even juggling balls. You can make them as big or small as you like.

Apart from learning new vocabulary words like sphere and 3 dimensional, you can also explore some math concepts by comparing size and weight. Try adding different kinds of “paper” like aluminum foil, tissue paper, plastic wrap, even old holiday wrapping paper works well and will give you a chance to explore textures and experiment with how well they work to help the balls bounce off surfaces, but not off each other!

Can you make a football? A Frisbee? Ok those last 2 are not spheres but you can see how easy it would be to take this project to the next level 🙂

Remember – work with what you have.

Visit @artoutofanything on FB to see the video, learn more and don’t forget to show me what you made!

Thanks so much for visiting and I’ll be back next week,

Patty

Marbling with Nail Polish

Today was the first day of our “Work with what you have” video series! You can visit us @artoutofanything on FB for the full video.

Nail Polish Marbleizing explores science and art concepts by focusing on surface tension and the Japanese art of Suminagashi, with which you can create beautiful designs by using ink and water.

Working with what you have in this case means using nail polish instead of ink.

Here are some fantastic websites that explain it all in more detail:

Teach Engineering: Surface Tension and Suminagashi – a complete lesson plan for teachers and homeschooling families using ink and water.

Geeky Nail Polish – a fun post about nail polish marbleizing for your actual nails with some really good follow up questions and answers from scientists!

Suminagashi.com – all you need to know about this beautiful art form.

Be sure to watch my video @artoutofanything on FB for the how to’s and be sure to follow and post your own versions of nail polish marbleizing. I would love to see what you come up with!

I’ll be back with more on Thursday!

Patty