Since we are all stuck at home for a while, I put together some little art history lessons and projects for my kids. I thought it would be fun to share them here for anyone interested.
For our first one we talked about Gustav Klimt and looked at some of his paintings. I made an info sheet on him that is available at the very bottom of this post. More information and photos of his paintings can be found here.
Our project was a yarn resist painting of a forest. Klimt painted a few landscapes of birch and beech forests while at Lake Attersee. I found the yarn painting idea on Pinterest. If anyone paints one I’d love to see! Message a photo to me on Instagram or Facebook. Here’s the tutorial!
Yarn Resist Beech Forest
Materials:
Canvas
Yarn
Brush
Paint
Colored Pencil
Instructions:
1 - Wrap yarn tightly around your canvas overlapping lots of strands for thicker trees and fewer for thinner trees. This will add dimension since trees closer to you look bigger and further trees look smaller. It looks more natural if the lines aren’t all perfectly straight! Tie the yarn ends together at the back and adjust the yarn lines to be how you’d like them.
2 - Start painting! You want to use the brush to dab the paint (not strokes!) so that you don’t move your yarn. Dab the paint right over the yarn. We used mainly golds and greens for the ground and blues for the sky. Use a variety of colors and make sure not to blend too much so that you can seen texture and colors for your forest floor.
3 - Once you fill up your canvas with color, let it dry. This is the fun part! Cut across all your yarns strands at the back and pull them off. Now you should have a forest of white trees!
4 - The last step is to add the detail. Use a dark colored pencil to add knots and lines to your trees. Now you have your own Beech Forest!
