Paul Klee - holiday trees

(This lesson is inspired by this beautiful tissue paper project I found on this art blog, and it reminded me of Paul Klee's painting, Castle and Sun. The discussion material is similar to our other Klee lesson.) 

Paul Klee, Castle and Sun, 1928

PAUL KLEE (1879-1940)

Castle and Sun, 1928

Pronounced: Kl-ee

Art Style: Expressionism

Art Terms: Primary Colors, Complementary Colors, Hot and Cool Colors

Art Activity: collage

Materials: bleeding tissue paper (some tissue paper is designed to bleed and some doesn't. Be sure that yours is the right kind or else the project won't work!); glue sticks, watercolor paper (1 larger piece, 1 smaller piece), sponge brushes, paper cups, water, scissors, and gold sharpies or gold paint w/ paintbrushes (sharpies would be easier).

Meet the Artist: (Slideshow here) Paul Klee (1879 - 1940), a swiss Expressionist artist, loved color. He used color as a language, to create a sense of place in his pictures (the Tunisian watercolors in the slideshow) or of temperature (The Nile painting - the blue and white squares tell the story of a cool river - we know it's water looking at it, even though we don't see the shape of an ocean or stream - in the slideshow). We can guess how he felt about what he painted by looking at the colors he used. Here's a link to another brief article about Klee for more background.

Discussion: This lesson is a good one for teaching the concept of contrast/warm and cool colors on the color wheel. One idea is to have kids who happen to be wearing primary colors (1 yellow, 1 blue, and one red) come stand in front of the class. Talk about what yellow and blue together make and call up someone wearing green, and then blue and red, and call up a purpley kid. Send them back to their seats and to discuss color temperature, consider colors that make us think of being hot, like in a desert. The kids are usually pretty quick to come up with red, yellow, and orange. Then being cold - cool colors are blue, green, and purple. Referencing the Klee slides, it's fun to look through the pictures with the kids and ask them what they think might be the temperature of the scenes, based on the colors Klee used... every time I've done this, the kids have had a lot of ideas about it. One other point of discussion you may want to cover if you have time is to compare Klee's abstract style to other more realistic works you may have looked at this year. For example: our previous lesson was one based on Winslow Homer's boat painting, "Breezing Up." We'd talking at length about the story Homer may have been telling through his picture and we compared the kind of story Klee might be communicating in "Castle and Sun" (last slide). An interesting open-ended question to pose is: can abstract art tell a story, like more realistic paintings?

Activity: 

Part 1 -Background paper: have the kids choose a few pieces of cool colored tissue paper (blue green purple black). I cut the tissue paper into roughly 6x6 squares to make it more manageable and to help the tissue go further. Use the sponge brush to dampen a piece of watercolor paper, and then lay the tissue paper on top and press down so the dye from the tissue paper transfers onto the paper. Remove the tissue paper and throw away. When the watercolor paper looks interesting, set aside.  

Part 2 - Tree paper: Have the kids choose a few pieces of warm colored tissue paper (yellow orange red) and do the same color transfer thing on a new piece of (smaller) watercolor paper that the kids did on the background.  

{While the paper dries, do the artist presentation/discussion so your paper has time to dry.}

Part 3 - Cut/paint trees: Cut out a variety of triangles from the warm-colored paper, and glue onto the cool colored paper. Then outline the trees with the gold sharpie or paint.