Last week, 3rd grade started their Gustav Klimt inspired trees. Originally, we were going to paint
them on brown construction paper, but our gold was no opaque enough for the coverage we wanted, so we ended up using our "practice trees" we did on our white paper instead! Sometimes you don't always go with what you originally planned, and that's ok! I was wondering what to do with the background, since it would be extremely difficult for them to try and paint around all their swirls, so I thought about oil pastels. And with the holidays right around the corner, I decided to do a red and green theme. (They could use different colors if they wanted to) So we filled in the background with red, green, and light green lines, and used yellow for little "ornaments" or shapes attached to the limbs.
Day 1: We talked about the art of Austrian artist Gustav Klimt and how he used actual gold leaf in his paintings. After we looked at his work, I demonstrated how to paint the tree with gold paint. We didn't draw it out, we just dove right in. For some this can make them very nervous, but they did a great job!
Day 2: we will use oil pastels to color in the background, and maybe add a little glitter as well!
Here are some super examples from Mrs. Campbell's 3rd grade class! They're off to a great start!
