Young Artists Explore: Tempera Painting! The Weekly Club

WHAT IS THIS WEEKLY CLASS ABOUT?
Painting (indeed, all art-making) is about exploring art materials and ideas. In this club, we'll do a lot of free-form exploration using paint. We'll develop increased familiarity with the medium and figure out ways to use colors and brushes to create effects we enjoy. Please note: I'm not going to be offering specific art instruction - I won't be teaching your young artist how to paint or draw a specific thing step-by-step. I will talk with them about what they're doing, to encourage them to start noticing how they create art, and continue to model talking about artwork. 

WHAT WILL YOU DO IN A SESSION?
We'll start with a quick greeting, and I'll suggest an idea for that day's painting. Then the young artists will get to work, and we'll share our work with each other at the end (if the learners want to, that is! I love for them to at least show their image, but I won't force it, nor will I make them talk about it if they don't wish to. It's my hope that even the shyest kids may wish to talk about their work eventually). 

I will suggest daily topics for our paintings, but after that, ultimately, it will be partially learner-led - I'll ask students what they have in mind, as well. I envision this as a time for young artists to come together to create art in community and share it with each other. I won't be listing out specific topics we'll cover each week or month, since that may vary based on the group dynamic. For example, if one learner decides to paint a picture of a favorite food one week, it's likely all learners will want to do that, and if that happens, that's fine with me! So I don't want to set up false expectations by listing topics that may end up changing. 

What might this look like in practice? For example, in a prior section of this class, we were talking about different colors, and I asked the students to think about things that are green. Someone named a pear, and I added a pear to my page. Then I decided to add an apple - and at the same time, a student who was very interested in outer space started creating a planetary scene, and discussion about that led to me adding rings around my apple and creating an apple planet - and before I knew it we had some very creative animated discussion about outer space and a few related paintings started popping up - but at the same time, a student was completely focused on their own underwater scene, and another was painting a self-portrait, and it was all open-ended and great fun! 

WHAT SUPPLIES DOES MY ARTIST NEED?
See the "learner supply list" section, below. Your artist will need brushes and liquid TEMPERA paints (if you want them to gain practice in mixing colors, then you can provide limited colors: the three primary colors plus black and white - but if they have multiple colors they want to use - I won't stop them)! ***Please make sure you will have these materials available for class. Watercolor or acrylic paints are very different materials from liquid tempera paint and require different instruction, so you can't substitute one for the other.*** Also note - this class will be messy! I recommend a smock and table covering!

A FEW NOTES ON CLASS POLICIES:
-Cameras must be turned on for the class.
-Parents are welcome to stay nearby, but must be off-camera.
-Siblings may share a camera, but all participating artists must be individually registered.
PARENTS: you are welcome to sit nearby to be present with your learners (but please know that per Outschool requirements, you need to keep yourself off-camera)!