Jackson Pollock Painting- Big Body Art

Jackson Pollock Painting

Following our study of Picaso and then Matisse, we read about the artistic painting method made famous by Jackson Pollock.  Our threes class had recently read about him in this great book which highlights 30 different artists:

They did some art work based on his technique and the children loved it, so we investigated it in the fours as well.  We read a couple of books about him and watched a short clip of him painting in his studio on the Ipad.

Then we had fun exploring his technique outside.

We placed several large sheets of rolled art paper on our blacktop area and held them down with rocks.  

We filled several sand buckets with paint and watered it down a bit.  We used about three-four cups tempera paint to one cup of water.  We gave them large brushes with long handles.  This is whole body art! It's fantastic!

The children loved exploring how to make the splatter go in different directions.  How it looked if you used the brush over head vs. in front.  They tried using two brushes at once. They moved around the paper as they had seen Jackson Pollock do in his video.  We added more paint and more paper as the interest in the project continued.

This activity was processed focused, but we did use the products.  We used them for tablecloths for our end of year picnics and our school used them to cover shelves and as backgrounds for our big art show fundraiser.

Did they get messy.  Yep!  This is exactly why we stress not sending children in to school in party clothes...but playclothes that can...and will get dirty.  They also keep two complete changes of clothes at school.  

Give Jackson Pollock's technique a try with your students. Let them learn who he was and how he made his art.  

and remember....a dirty kid is a happy kid....a paint covered child who just experienced big body art...is a really happy one.