Different Strokes for Different Folks

The portfolio of reproductions of famous paintings on this particular day included Van Gogh’s Bedroom, Roy Lichtenstein’s Van Gogh Bedroom, Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie, and Dubuffet’s Parade of Objects. It was a good mix of representational and abstract styles.

For the first 15 minutes we talked about color, line, shape, depth of field, etc.

Art Aware would give presentations to all the art classes scheduled for the week with the resident art teacher observing. Five hundred students a week from first through eighth grade would be an average number for most schools.

Thanks to having art every week for all of their elementary school years, the students knew how to put their marks on the page.

I gave them oil crayons and the choice of plain paper or graph paper to work with. Hexagon-sided paper in some classes was given out so that the finished art could fit together a class mural.

Julie, a sixth grader, chose vibrant colors and solid shapes to do a flat view of Van Gogh’s bed; her modern, yellow chair was influenced by the Lichtenstein reproduction.

Stephanie, a fifth grader was entirely creative in her design of the bedroom which was influenced by Van Gogh, Mondrian and Lichtenstein.

You can see great results when kids realize different strokes for different folks is entirely the way art works – and that they themselves are the artists!

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