Have you ever grown a garden? What do you imagine growing in your garden? What would you plant to make it your own? What kind of colours shapes and textures would it have? What kind of creatures would visit and live in your garden?
This project used a variety of materials you can find around home to create a painted garden of your wildest imagination, using Edmonton artist Emmanuel Osahor's I have been thinking of my father's garden as our inspiration.
For the project we will create a paint collage! Collage usually is made by cutting out and gluing down different shapes, colours and types of paper materials to create a piece of art. We will be making our collage by dipping our objects in paint and stamping them on our paper to create our “collage” of layered shapes and images.
The artist:
Osahor, Emmanuel
I have been thinking of my father's garden
Osahor, Emmanuel
I have been thinking of my father's garden
Interested in learning more about Emmanuel and his work? Check out this Q&A with the artist.
The materials:
- Paper 8x10. Printer paper works but thicker paper is a bit better
- Paint in a variety of colours - bottled tempera works the best, acrylic is good too
- Big brush or sponge
- Water container for washing your brush
- Cardboard 8x10 or a bit smaller than your paper
- Tinfoil larger than your cardboard
- Pallet - Wax paper -1 square sheet or Styrofoam tray
- Various objects of assorted sizes, shapes and textures (these will get paint on them so use things that can be washed or that are not precious) wood pieces, Lego, buttons, lids, cardboard pieces, clothespins, small cut sponges, textured fabric etc.
- Markers or sharpie
- A place to work that can get a bit messy!
The process:
- Cut a piece of foil a couple inches larger than your cardboard. Crunch foil then open it up, flatten it out and wrap around carboard and fold excess over cardboard edges.
- With a brush or sponge, cover the crinkled foil with the paint colour of your choice. Midtone colours work best (not too light and not too dark).
- Before the paint dries, lay paper over paint covered foil and press all over with palm of your hands, then peel paper back and set aside to dry.
- Repeat steps 3 if you still have extra wet paint on your foil.
- Get your objects ready! Add some new colours of paint to your pallet. Using one object at a time, dip your object in the colour of your choice and start stamping the items in your garden.
Stamping tips:
- Use one object at a time and one colour at a time.
- Try making different patterns and textures by rolling or dragging objects on you background.
- If you want to stamp over another pattern, you can apply wet paint on wet paint and you will mix a new colour, or you can let the first colour dry before applying the next to layer clean colours
6. Once you have layered all the items in your garden, let your work dry completely.
7. Take your sharpie or marker and you can draw the details of your garden! Do you need to add tiny branch veins in your leaves, creatures and garden helpers that are hiding? Use your imagination!
8. Post your work online with #youragafromhome
Art techniques and terminology:
- Collage: A collage is a piece of art that incorporates a variety of materials. It often involves gluing things like paper, cloth, or found objects onto a canvas or board and incorporating that into a painting or composition. The exclusive use of photos in collage is called photomontage.
- Mixed media: artworks composed from a combination of different media or materials.
- Midtone: Mid-toned colours are in the middle of the tonal spectrum, neither dark nor light.
- Wet on wet: or alla prima (Italian, meaning at first attempt), direct painting or au premier coup, is a painting technique in which layers of wet paint are applied to previously administered layers of wet paint. The technique requires a fast way of working, because the work has to be finished before the first layers have dried.
