During “Island Adventures” week, our campers made some amazing island-inspired artwork, entirely from dots!
“The dot painting project was based loosely on the Haitian folk art flags created with sequins,” explains art teacher Sue Rice. “We looked at some of the imagery, such as animals, sea creatures, boats and mermaids, and explored how to simplify the images so that they could be represented with through the building up of and layering of dots.”
An example of Haitian flag art - this piece, entitled "La Sireine Labeleine" is by Gabriel Lalanne. A flag 36" x 36" can have as many as 20,000 hand-sewn beads and sequins!
“The emphasis of the project was on color theory (cool and warm, bright and dull, combining opposites) and not on detailed drawings.
“We also looked at two dot-crazy European painters, Seurat and Van Gogh, and examined their paintings with a magnifying glass to see how each would combine a surprising array of colors to make, say, a tree trunk or a hat.
“For the painting project we used a variety of media in a certain sequence– watercolor foundation, then dot markers, cork dots with tempera paints, stick-on dots, and tiny q-tip-painted dots on top. The students could experiment with color and media combinations that produced often surprising results.”
To see more of our “Island Adventures” camp week, check out our online slideshow.
ACA Arts Blog 
Very creative!