Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Comics and Pop Art

Today we did another project inspired by Pop Art.  I say "inspired" because I think the project might be better suited to older kids, but we did enjoy it and Jo was happy and interested both during and after the project.  That means it was a success!  This is another project that comes from MaryAnn Kohl's book, "Discovering Great Artists," and it is inspired by Roy Lichtenstein.  Lichtenstein is the Pop artist who painted comic book scenes and used large words in his paintings like, "Wham!"  Jo thinks those big words painted into his pictures are hilarious.  She was going, "Wham!" over and over, and then, "Mommy, why does it say, 'Wham!'?  Cue hysterical giggles.  I think if art makes you laugh then it's worked!  What do you think?

First we looked at the comics through a magnifying glass to see how the colors are actually made of up many dots.  This might have worked better back when the print in the paper was a little more crude.  It's kind of hard to see "dots" anymore, although we spotted some in the larger expanses of light colors.  The girls love the magnifying glass.

We read the comics a little, and then Jo chose Lucy from Peanuts as the character she wanted to work with.  The idea was to sketch the character onto a large piece of paper (we used the easel) and then encourage the child to make dots using colors like red, blue, and yellow.  Up close the painting will look like dots (which are visible in Lichtenstein's paintings) but from further away the dots will blend together to make the picture.

Blank Lucy
I sketched Lucy (hold your applause) and Jo painted.  She really enjoyed it!  I don't know that the whole "dot" idea was exactly what she executed, but she did get the idea and enjoyed the process.  

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