Jackson Pollock

Mr. Pollock was a painter who lived from 1912 to 1956, ultimately dying in a car crash at the young age of 44. As most of you probably know, Jackson was famous for his "drip paintings." Oftentimes, people exclaim "Well I could've done that!" But the reason Mr. Pollock is famous is because he was a pioneer of the method during a time when people were dabbling more and more into abstract art. He was known for splattering, spraying, squirting, dripping, and pouring paint onto his canvas. He used all sorts of materials to do this such as brushes, sticks, spatulas, spoons, etc. He worked with his canvas on the floor so that he could "dance" around it as he worked. 

So I'm pretty sure that I have a few more grey hairs after this project than when I started it! We started off by talking about Mr. Pollock and his different ways that he made art. Then I introduced them to string painting. Each table had a different color and they were encouraged to string paint with as many colors as they wanted to. For the second day of project, every two tables were given three boxes with an artwork in the bottom and marbles in it. The students didn't know whose artwork was in their box. I walked around and put a squirt of paint in each box. The students then had 40 seconds to roll the marbles around through the paint. After 40 seconds, they were asked to pass their box to the next person and I put a new color in it. Then we repeated the process again. We did this over and over until each painting had several different colors marble painted on to it. For the final day of the project, we reviewed our lines and shapes. I was so impressed with how well they remembered their lines after not having talked about them for so long! They were given black paint to paint different lines and shapes onto their artwork. Using the black paint as the final step was inspired by Deep Space Sparkle's Pollock project. We also reviewed how to use a paint brush correctly. Overall, I love how expressive the works turned out and how stark the black lines and shapes are against their backgrounds.