Art camp at home (with dollar store supplies)

With so many things closed this summer, our family is finding creative ways to create summer camp experiences at home. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing ideas. Last week was art camp. This was very simple to set up and my kids loved it.

My kids love to do artwork. And they’re pretty lucky because I’m a mom who doesn’t mind a mess. I decided to try my hand at art camp at home. I ran to the dollar store and picked up a bunch of supplies that were a dollar each, including brushes, small pallets for paint and various size canvases. The paint we used this week I already had at home. We did camp over the course of 4 days.

Day 1: Impressionists and Botanical Illustrations.

What you’ll need:

Q tips

paint

paper

canvas

flowers and plant clippings

Before we began we talked about the five elements of shape:

dots

angled lines

circles

curved lines

straight lines

We practiced these elements before we began.

We discussed a few impressionists paintings and I read a brief background of Claude Monet.

Then I had the kids create a nature scene from memory using qtips and paint.

The second activity we did was based on Carl Linnaeus, a botanist turned painter. I clipped flowers and herbs from my garden and my kids painted illustrations of them.

Day 2: Abstract

What you’ll need:

Canvas (or thick paper)

Ruler

Pencil

Paint and brushes

This was a lot of fun for me. We looked up abstract paintings on the computer and talked about how abstract allowed both the artist and the audience to use their imagination when viewing the paintings. A painting of a cat may have many different shapes and colors that a real-life cat does not.

We practiced folding a paper into four squares and drawing four sides of something using different elements of shapes.

We discussed Pieter Cornelis Mondriaa, a dutch painter who pioneered the abstract technique using mostly geometric shapes.

We looked up examples of his most famous paintings and did them in our own style.

This was so simple. Each child used a ruler and pencil to draw out the shapes and then painted them mostly primary colors.

I gave them bonus points if their painting could tell a story. (Even if they were the only one who saw the story.)

Day 3: Jackson Polluck and abstract expressionism

What you’ll need:

canvas

spray bottle

cardboard box

paint

Jackson Pollock is arguably one of the most famous painters in American history. His drip technique is very easy for kids to try and a lot of fun. But also stressful because I let my three-year-old sling paint.

Allowing my kids to try drip paint created some great discussions on what art is and reminded me of the criticism Pollock himself received for his paintings feeling “random and disorganized.” But sometimes our feelings are random and unorganized and art allows us to express those feelings.

I filled up a spray bottle with water and paint (1/3 paint 2/3 water) and my kids sprayed the canvases. They also stood above their paintings and dripped and flung paint at them. It was actually hilarious.

Day four: Faith Ringgold and her narrative quilts

What you’ll need:

magazines

photographs

construction paper

scissors

glue sitck

Faith Ringgold is fascinating to me, and she was the only living artist we studied this week. She has dabbled in a lot of artistic areas including, performance art, sculpture, and mixed media. But she is more known for her narrative quilts.

Ringgold paints on fabric quilts and her art has a narrative, one of her most famous pieces, called Tar Beach 2 tells the story of an 8-year-old girl from Harlem who dreams of flying.

So we created our own stories about our family. But we did things differently. I gave my kids magazines and family photographs and told them to cut out pictures that best represented our home. Then they layered cut up photographs of our family on top.

As you can see chickens and farm life plays an important role.

Art camp was so much fun. If you try it please take a picture of it and tag me on Instagram .