Kids Get Arty: Andy Warhol Art

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Andy Warhols for Kids (2)

Kids Get ArtyHooray, it is time for Kids Get Arty again – the bi monthly challenge to get you exploring Great Artists and their art with your children (read more about it and see our previous projects HERE). Please only link up ART PROJECTS today. Crafts will be back next week! This month we are looking at Andy Warhol Art. Andy Warhol, with his pop art in bright colours, has been on our Great Artist to do list right from the beginning. There are so many ways you can explore Andy Warhol Art with kids, and I am sure we will come back to him again in the future.

This article is now also available in German: Andy Warhol Erforschen.

campbells_soup andy warhol

Personally, I remember learning about him at school (*cough* all those years ago) and just loving the symmetry and process of repeating images over and over again. It was the first time, I went home and created my “own artwork” outside the class room. Though, I know Andy Warhol’s work is about much much more, the element that attracted me as a child was that the same image was used over and over again, but in different colours. I also liked that he took every day objects and made them into art.

Andy warhol flowers

Flowers

Spot the 2nd flower picture from the left on the 2nd row… What is different about it?

So it is that element that we focussed on in this project. I picked Andy Warhol’s Flowers, as I thought it would appeal to Pip Squeak too.

And now I am going to be super lazy and quote Gallery Warhol:

The simplicity of the image, bright and flat, meant that these instantly accessible paintings were easy to serialize. Warhol had declared his wish to be a machine and to remove himself as much as possible from the artistic process and from the work of art itself. Between June and July 1964, his “Factory” studio became an assembly line dedicated to the fabrication of Flowers. As photographs document, Warhol worked on the Large Flowers paintings himself, but he employed a legion of assistants to manufacture an estimated total of 900 smaller Flowers, finishing as many as eighty per day. “Friends come over to the Factory and do the work with me,” Warhol said.
“Sometimes there’ll be as many as fifteen people in the afternoon, filling in the colors and stretching the canvases.” (Op. cit, p. 193).

Andy Warhol’s Art Project with Kids – our process

flowers 2

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1) I took one of Andy Warhol’s Images from the internet and edited out all the colour. Ironically (?) or interestingly (?) this is something that Warhol did himself. He saw a photograph by Patricia Caulfield and copied it – she saw this and was not happy. A law suit ensued and he had to pay her a fee (source). A cautionary tale in using original photos in your work. After that Warhol took many of his own photos.

 warhol for kids 2

Painting

2) As I was working with young children (=short attention spans), I thought the idea of Warhol’s factory “workers” was ideal. We would ALL contribute to the finished artwork. We even had friends join in who visited. Pip Squeak straight away went for reds and pinks. We used tempera powder paint and are very much still learning how to use it! First we applied it to thickly.. and then later learned to make it more watery. It was a fun process for us all. The Englishman did 2, Pip Squeak did 2, Red Ted 4, I did 1. The next day a friend and did 2 and I did another. However, I had switched computers and for some reason the second day’s print outs were marginally larger. So we created two collages with them, instead of one.

Andy Warhol for Kids (2)

The arrangement is as important as the individual art pieces themselves.

3) I cut out all the paintings and discussed with Red Ted how to arrange them. We had noticed with Andy Warhol’s flowers, how often one flower was “out of place” – i.e. turned by 90 degrees or printed in a different way. Red Ted liked this. So he put his four paintings together and turned them by 90 degrees relative to ours.

Warhol

Our Andy Warhol Art inspired Art

4) And then we hung them up. One set is in our bedroom and another in the hallway. (Space issues more than anything else).

kids warhol

Lovely! We really did enjoy this “communal” project and how it took the pressure off the individual and still how much control we had over the finished artwork.

Also time to revisit our little Preschooler book on Andy Warhol (though it does NOT contain the Flowers artwork):

Andy Warhol’s Colors By Susanna Rubin This is great little board book that will also appeal to toddlers.  It is a nice child size and it has some wonderful Warhol reproductions in it. Like the Dog (You Are So Little) and Cat. They are surprisingly child friendly drawings and with pop art brightness perfect for discussing and discovering colours. A very sweet book and one I can read with a 1 year old AND a 3 year old AND enjoy as an adult. Perfect! Because of it is clean simple pages, this would make a great book for exploration prior to an art project.

Check out more Art Books for Kids.

Art for kidsSo.. now it is your chance! We would love to see what Great Artists you have been exploring with your kids and how you approached your arty projects! Come link up. Kids Get Arty is co-hosted by The Imagination Tree, Imagination Soup,  Creative with Kids Tinkerlab and Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas.


Disclaimer: by joining the Kids Get Arty linky – you give us permission to highlight any projects on Red Ted Art or share your art ideas on Pintrest – we will always link to your site! If you have been arty with your kid’s please link up!

I can’t wait to see what Art Projects for Kids you did!