Do it yourself Impressionism Camouflage (by Pam Wellington)

Materials:

16x20 inch Canvas Board
Good quality acrylic paints (Dick Blick in jars).
Acrylic gloss medium
Pieces of heavy cardboard
Cut strips from Impressionist paintings, including horizon line, sky and ground.
Provide various color schemes for students to make their choice. Source of strips: calendars or internet images printed in color.

Procedures:

Activity One:

Create a scale of color from dark to light in 10 steps by using white to tint and black to shade. Use all three primaries and secondaries.

Create a scale in ten steps using complementary sets of: blue and orange, red and green, purple and yellow. The fifth step on the scale should be a neutral grey or brown.

Activity Two:

1. Select a strip from an Impressionist painting.
2. Glue the strip down to the surface of the canvas using acrylic gloss medium. All four sides of the strip must be on the canvas surrounded by white, not on an edge. 3. Gently squeegee out excess medium with a piece of cardboard until the strip of paper is flat to the surface with no bubbles or folds.
4. Select one predominant color that is on the strip and paint a wash of color over the whole canvas to “kill the white." The under-painting will give the whole painting a warm or cool feel.
5. Match the colors exactly all the way around the strip on all four sides.
6. Extend the composition out to the edges of the painting, continuing to accurately match colors and brush stroke techniques.
7. Many colors will have to be layered to get the exact match.
8. Colors must match hue, value and intensity exactly, so that the strip seems to disappear or is very hard to see.
9. Make sure that the strip is not painted over.
10. Keep compositions simple, without adding a lot of extra “stuff”, such as rivers, roads, buildings, trees, etc.