Folk Art Vernissage

For the past month, our class has been working on our folk art paintings. We are very thankful for all the effort that Lyne has put into helping us and showing us the process of this wonderful type of art. All of the students worked very hard on their paintings, and the class truly enjoyed the time.

Before even picking up a brush, we learned all about the history of Canadian folk art and about folk art of today. Folk art is art created by untrained artists, like us. It is often inspired by nature and the personal interests of the artist. We took time to draw out a plan for our paintings. Our plans included both the foreground, middle ground and background. While we were drawing our plans, we took time to think about colour choice, use of patterns and subject matter. We learned about the different themes of folk art; whimsical, realistic, humourous, fantasy and tells a story.

To begin our paintings, we each started with a piece of plywood. We sanded down the boards and covered them with gesso. We used a sponge brush to paint our base colour before we were able to paint our background. Then we painted another layer for our background, middle ground, and foreground, all the while using our drawings to guide us. After that we started adding more detail and colours and our paintings started to come to life!☻

When we finished our paintings and had our vernissage and ate our fill of snacks, then we became true artists! We are very thankful to Lyne and all of the parents who came to our vernissage. Without them it would not have been as big of a success!