Time is flying... This week was the 6th class, which means we are halfway through the semester already! I was very excited about this week’s project. Earlier in the course, we had worked with still life and this time around, I thought it would be interesting to paint from something visual, in front of us on the table, but then play with size and comparison. So I took out my fake (but quite lifelike) raven and bought a bag of jellybeans, and wanted then to play with the story and the format.We started out talking about surrealism - about dreams and how they don’t make sense, I felt it was a great art movement to bring into this class. We looked at Renè Magritte’s work in particular, a personal favorite of mine! I wanted them to combine the two elements in their own way, tell a (dreamlike) story - perhaps the bird would be the size of the candy... or it may be flying with a huge jellybean in it’s beak... or it cold just have landed on a mountain of the colorful candy.
It was up to them to use their imagination on these elements, but still looking at them while painting, to study the beak compared to the feet and the length of the wings.
I sensed that they had a fun time - they produced some great work, and they all did a great job mixing the right colors from the few prime colors that were available to them. Their interpretations were very different - that is always so interesting! And we ended the session - yes, exactly; - by eating Jellybeans...
