Klimt's Tree of Life

My second graders just finished paintings inspired by Gustav Klimt's Tree of Life. They started by painting a watercolor wash for the background, yellow on most of it with a little bit of brown on the bottom. Next class, we drew the tree together. On the SmartBoard I showed them Klimt's painting and drew on it, emphasizing the Y shape where the tree branches split from the trunk and the way the trunk and branches get skinnier as they move away from the base of the tree.

Once the trees were drawn I showed them how to choose paint brushes based on the needs of their painting. I told them to get a medium sized flat brush and a small round tip brush and showed them how to move the brush from side to side to create a very crisp line with their paint. They took the painting part very seriously, it was actually silent in the room for a while they were so focused!

The final step was to add a few sequins to imitate Klimt's patterns. If I had it to do over (which I do, next year!), I would order sequins that are only circular and/or square. The kids got a bit too focused on the different shapes and lost their focus on their patterns.

Tree of Life

I really like Gustav Klimt's Tree of Life painting. I recently found TeachKidsArt's version of this project and really like it. However, I want to do something a little more in-depth with the children too. So, I created the following examples today with Sargent Metallic Acrylic paint and Sharpies (for the leaves and bird). I think the kids are going to enjoy this quick painting project and if we have time (field trips keep popping up-gotta love spring!), we will also do the scuplture version on the last day of art so they can bring them home to grow the grass.

I used manilla tagboard that was donated to our district and started with a light yellow tempera wash using lots of water to give them the nice tone for the background. The ground is copper, and the trees are gold and antique gold. Once it dried I added the Sharpie details. Quick, but nice results. I hope to do this with my second graders.