Inspired by Karla Gerard

While scrolling through my favorite site, Pinterest, I came across an EBay seller/artist named Karla Gerard.  Her work is what I would categorize as modern folk art...whimsical, colorful, and simple. Not only was her work appealing to me, it was appealing to my fifth graders!

We started off the project by using a 12x18 sheet of white paper and drew some elements from her work on the page in white oil pastel...elements which we continued to see repeated throughout many of her series of artworks: hills with colorful patterns, simple colorful 2-D and 3-D houses, and big swirly trees. Actually, they only drew the hills and houses and left room for the tree, which would be the last thing they would paint on Day 2.

We then used liquid watercolors (my new favorite medium, I just love the bright colors you can get with them!!!) **side note** I use ice cube trays to dispense the liquid watercolors. Even though I somewhat limited their palette here, there was still plenty of room in the trays for them to dip.

I had them paint the sky/background first on Day 1. On day two I let them use their choices to paint in their designs. They used liquid black (water-soluble) ink to paint their tree on top of their background.

I wish I had 256,098 square feet of space to hang all of these colorful pieces of work...I am just so in love with EACH of them!

Who has inspired you lately?