April Art a la Carte

Today, Eric had his monthly art class, called Art a la Carte. This month's theme was Mexican Folk Art. This is the bulletin board example of what the art they made in class.

They started with a purple-colored circular piece of construction paper and a flat styrofoam circle covered with aluminum foil. They first made a radial design in the aluminum foil circle to mimic designs in metal in some pieces of Mexican Folk Art. They then used two different sizes of paper plates to outline the concentric circles then they colored in patterns of their choosing with colors of their choosing.

Most of the kids chose very bright colors, some of them with contrasting colors and some with similar colors. One boy used mostly shades of blue, and it took the outlining in black to be able to see what the actual design was. Many of the girls chose pink as one of their colors. Another boy used similar shades of orange and red that almost looked like the same colors. As usual, most of the kids had strong feelings about what colors and patterns they wanted to use.

This is Eric with his artwork. I would have chosen much brighter colors, but he made his own choices and this piece is all his work. The kids spent a lot of time coloring in their designs, and some didn't actually finish. Eric, for example, was supposed to fill in all of the purple-colored paper background with oil pastel, but he didn't really have time to do the extra coloring before the teacher started picking up their artwork to put away. One of the boys seemed satisfied with drawing his design and didn't really feel like coloring more than half of his design in, despite repeatedly being told to keep coloring.

It's hard to appreciate in this photo, but Eric filled in his middle foil section with a heart with arrows coming out of it, and then a scalloped line around that--similar to what the teacher had used as an example during class.

As usual, I enjoyed helping out with the class almost as much as the kids enjoyed doing the art work. Only one more art class to go this school year. I'm so glad that Eric is still at an age and stage of life where he enjoys seeing me at his school, because I enjoy being there.