Easter ‘Art Camp’ – Klimt

Art Camp for Easter 2018 was all about the sumptuous work of Gustav Klimt’s Golden Period. We started off by looking at and talking about a number of his artworks, in particular, The Kiss. We discussed the qualities of his work and the use of colour and and patterns – how he used gold to embellish his paintings, and the unashamedly extravagant use of patterns, geometric shapes, organic patterns and repeated motifs.  creating artworks oozing with richness and opulence.

We started a with a fun activity where the children were asked to design a cloak/outfit for a Klimt-inspired figure to wear. They were asked really focus on decorative features and bold pattern making. This activity looked at how both the foreground and background could be equally patterned creating a composition which might lack realistic perspective but was unashamedly decorative! The children were given samples of possible pattern making ideas to help stimulate their designs and really get them in the zone for full on pattern making.

The next activity was an opportunity for the children to explore colour by playing with shapes and simple print making techniques using opulent metallic paints. The young creatives used a variety of materials to make the marks  – sponges, bottle tops, clay tools, corks – basically anything that could be painted and used to print with.  This was an opportunity to see how different colours works together and really make their compositions sing.

The final activity was to combine all the different processes and ideas to design their own character and/or outfit. They were given freedom to design a decorative animal, character or a person wearing some kind of outfit, as long as the main focus was on combining patterns and rich colours.