A few weeks ago, The Husband and I went away on a getaway to Arizona. While we were there, we visited a Celebration of Fine Art, which was an amazing display of 100 artists. Many of the artists were there creating as we watched and we were able to ask questions and find out more about their process. It was interesting and inspiring!
One of the artists we spoke to was William Barnhart. We were in awe of one of his sculptures and found his other work quite fascinating. This artwork is something our family worked on together and it was inspired by his style of paintings. He uses black outlines and bright colours to create almost a stained glass effect. He has done figure studies and this is evident in his work. We went with those concepts to create our own artwork inspired by his.
I bought black puffy fabric paint and a large foam board at the dollar store and lay out some designs using the puffy paint. In keeping with the art I was inspired by, I made sure there were some figures that could be made out but kept most of it ambiguous.
We let the puffy paint dry overnight because I wanted to be absolutely sure it didn’t smudge. When we were ready to complete our piece, it happened to be a Saturday, so even The Husband got in on the painting. It was a very relaxing family morning and we are so pleased with the results!
The only instruction we gave the kids was to use bright colours and their imaginations. We used acrylic paint for our artwork but tempera or oil would work as well. We let them experiment with mixing their own colours. Sometimes they chose to paint an entire area between the black borders one colour while other times they created their own colour lines within one section.
I love the bright colours! We are planning on hanging this piece in our entryway and are quite proud of our first family collaborative artwork!