Tone That Painting

This week the Middle School Co-op Class received their acrylic paint kits. The kits consisted of a plastic box with a lid, 5 tubes of paint, brushes, paper towel, and parchment paper. The paper towel and parchment gets moistened and placed on the lid which becomes their palette. After students are finished for the day the bottom of the box becomes the lid to keep the paints moist for the next time they paint. This is called a wet palette.

The students are beginning their acrylic painting experience by painting an Abstract Minimalist Landscape.  After discussing the feelings that different colors evoke, students chose a color to tone their painting surface.

Abstract art is art where artists use color, line, form, and the other elements of art to interpret a subject. It does not realistically resemble the subject. Minimalism means that the subject is overly simplified, very, very few if any details are presented. Many Abstract Minimalist Landscape paintings consist of bands or swaths of color representing the foreground, middle ground, background and sky.

Here is a link to an artist's online gallery who creates Minimalist Landscapes. Her name is Toni Grote. Many of her landscapes I would consider to be Abstract Minimalist Landscapes.

Click here to view art by Toni Grote.

Next week we will (hopefully) paint the sky, background, middle ground and foreground. Students were to paint a trading card this week and if they had time to tone the canvas covers of their Art Journals.