Taught first children's OP class
I taught my first oil pastel class today.
2 boys, 2 girls, ages 7-10. It was great!
Some ideas I went in with worked, some didn't. They caught onto concepts quicker than I thought.
But I overestimated their drawing skills. I adapted and walk them thru drawing shapes. We have 3 more weekly classes in this session. I need to figure out a way to help their drawing skills and still spend plenty of time painting. I need to ponder on this...
Here is what we did the first class:
(These are photos of my demos. They were working along with me. Next time I have to remember to take photos of their work.)
I asked them to pick out a warm and cool out of each of 4 brands of oil pastels. They all already knew what warm & cool colors were. Then we made a large swatch of one of each brand and smeared it with a finger. We started out with the one that was about $3 for 60 sticks and progressed up to the one about $250 for 60 stick. I wanted them to see and feel the difference between hard & soft sticks as well as low and high pigment load.
Next we created a color chart of all the colors in the oil pastel box we were using.
Cray-Pas Expressionist is a good quality with a good pigment load for not a lot of money.
And the set of 25 is a good size to start with.
After that we started talking about lights and shadows.
Block on the top left is where i asked them what color to use to lighten orange. White. Then I asked what color to use to to darken orange. One girl answered " You can't use black that's too dark so maybe gray". I was impressed that she knew not to use black.
Then I said I had another way to do it (block on bottom left). I explained that we would use the color wheel and move 2 steps right and left to lighten and darken. And if we needed something really dark, we'd go straight across the color wheel to the complementary color. One boy knew what that was and offered that red & green are complementaries. When I did the blue shadow and added orange (complement) over it, They saw how this gave me a nice dark color.
Then I did the block using the color wheel again (top right), this time with them doing it with me. They caught onto these concepts so quickly and were telling me which colors to use. When I suggested that the2 step wasn't light enough, we tried adding a little white. And they saw there wasn't just one way to do it.
One surprise I had was that I had to coach them thru drawing line by line. I realized this when I drew the cubes above and asked them to draw one.So when we went on to the still life of the colored blocks, I drew center lines thru my photo and had them do the same on their paper. We located each line, what direction and about how long it was. I did it at the board and they followed on their papers. It took quite a while but they ended up with better results.
We went thru putting colors on each block with them telling me what colors to use and me making occasional additional suggestions.
Their works varied greatly in how enthusiastically they spread the OP around but they all did good. And I think they had fun.
Posted by Ann Tucker at 4/2/2010 8:53 PM 
Categories: Demo, Beginner Lessons, kid's art
Tags: demo children Teach lesson oil pastel
Categories: Demo, Beginner Lessons, kid's art
Tags: demo children Teach lesson oil pastel
This sounds like a wonderful lesson!
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