block paintings

I painted scrap wood in bright colors with enamel paint so that when the art club arived they had bright, glossy blocks in different sizes to work with for their chicken paintings. First we took time to look at chicken illustrations in books and magazines for inspiration. Then we spent about a half hour drawing chickens on paper. We picked our favorite designs for painting on the blocks. Some of the kids worked better when they had a pencil cartoon to start with, while others wanted to work directly with the paint right away. I encouraged some of the students to go back into their paintings with sharpie markers after the paint was dry because many of them had a hard time getting linear definition with a paint brush. They came up with some wonderful paintings. I was interested in the paintings as a group because they had a relationship in terms of method, but each artist really brought their own sensibility to the project.