Joshua Tree National Park - Artist in Residence Day 10


Last Day of Collaborative Painting

I again spent much of the day at the elementary school having 6th graders work on some of the finishing touches of our three collaborative paintings.  When I do projects like this, the real hard part is in the planning, choosing a subject that the students can be successful with.  In the case of this project, with a specific range of subjects to depict (different areas through the park), the options for finding an approachable subject are highly limited.  And so, there have been some challenges in determining what instruction is enough versus too much in getting these kids who have had little to no art instruction to take the time to observe and mimic what they see.  Personality plays a big role in this as well, and I've only had a small amount of time with this group.  Overall though, I think it's gone quite well.  I have some minor tweaking to do in areas where the paint didn't fully cover, where shapes got a little too weird, where shadows don't fit the lighting, but these are small things.  Here are images of two of the paintings, the third needs more help, there were a couple unfortunate accidents with splattering paint that I need to patch.  Also, the colors look terrible because I took these images in my room with very yellow light.  When all three are done, I'll get some decent shots to share.

In the afternoon I went to town to find wifi so I could get a little work done, then fixed dinner and settled in for the night.