Did you miss Kohl’s Art Generation Family Sundays at Home: Animals in Art? No worries! We’ll be featuring some of our favorite activities from the virtual event in the coming weeks.
Learn to make your own clay and sculpt snakes with Dianne.
Category: Studio at Home
Make moving art inspired by the kinetic sculpture of Harry Bertoia.
Markets are great places to discover new things to buy and eat. In his work Crowded Market, Laurent Casimir captured a very busy outdoor market in Haiti. The artist filled every inch of his painting with people who are buying and selling goods, helping us imagine what it felt like to be there. Can you spot some of the different things people are buying and selling in the painting?
This week, we are going to make our own paint, using items that you may find at a market. With a grown-up’s permission, look for colorful spices and foods in your home. Flower petals are also a great source of color. Not everything you choose will make a good paint, so you’ll want to try them out before starting your artwork. Avoid foods that are sticky or very thick. Here are some of the things I collected:
Artist Philomé Obin and his son, Antoine, worked together to complete this painting. In the work, you can see Philomé on the left, Antoine on the right, and Philomé’s brother, Sénéque, who was also an artist, in the center. They are sitting in front of the Centre d’Art in their hometown of Cap-Haïtien. Philomé opened this school and gallery as a branch of the Centre d’Art in Port Au Prince, Haiti.
When it comes to materials, many artists are resourceful. To create his sculptures, Haitian blacksmith Georges Liautaud (1899–1991) used discarded steel drums that were left on the island. Liautaud cut and flattened the round drums, used fire to clean off the oil and dirt, and drew designs on the metal in preparation for sculpting. He then cut, punched holes in, and embossed (or pushed into the metal to create raised marks) the material. He was the first artist to create sculptures in this way. Liautaud taught this technique to many other blacksmiths and artists in Haiti. Today, it is still one of the country’s most popular art forms.
Do you need a place to keep all your creative ideas? Sketchbooks are a great option. Their pages can hold a jumble of doodles, notes, finished works of art—or all of the above! Artists often use their sketchbooks to work out big ideas and practice their drawings. Follow the steps below to create your own sketchbook!
American artist Al Held (1928–2005) was an abstract painter, most famous for his large-scale, geometric works. His paintings are full of circles, squares, cubes, and other geometric shapes and forms that overlap. In the painting below, he used a masking technique to create lines with sharp edges. He masked (covered) the white sections with tape and painted the remaining sections black.
Here’s how you can make your own geometric painting using materials you may already have at home:
Follow along to learn how to make a scratch art story inspired by the hydrias, or ancient Greek water jars, in the Museum’s collection.
It’s almost Mother’s Day! Give your mom, grandma, or any other special person in your life a flower bouquet that will last forever. This week, we’re making paper flowers inspired by the gorgeous blooms you can find in artworks throughout the Museum’s galleries. This is one of my favorite floral still lifes.
Let’s get started! Here are instructions for making two different kinds of paper flowers.
This week, we’re drawing inspiration from quilts in the Museum’s collection, including Margaret A. Beattie’s Crazy Quilt. Look closely at the rows of fancy stitches and designs on top of the fabric patches. This is called embroidery and is made with needle and thread. It is a traditional way to decorate crazy quilts. Experiment with sewing your own fancy stitches, as you learn to make and stitch a lacing board.