Action Painting with Jackson Pollock!

Katie Allen
Feb 7, 2016
2 min read

Hello everyone! Thank you for taking the time to check out my webpage for SUNY Buffalo State's Community Arts Academy visual arts class! This is my first year teaching this class, and I am excited about the opportunity to teach the young artists enrolled.

Our first class was a "getting to know everyone" day. While it is a small class, it is important to get to know each other since we will be spending ten classes together! We started the class by writing our names anywhere we wanted on a piece of paper. I then instructed them to draw certain things they enjoyed like, their favorite season, thing to do outside, favorite food, favorite tv show/book, etc. After everyone was done drawing we sat in a circle and each took a turn talking about our drawings and ourselves!

By then it seemed like everyone had ants in their pants and wanted to jump around and move around the classroom. After we took a short water fountain break we decided to make a mess- in an artistic way of course!

I introduced the group to Jackson Pollock and we watched a clip of Pollock painting. We talked about how it was called action painting since he moved around the artwork as he splashed, dripped, and poured the paint onto the canvas.

Now here is the messy part: Each student got their own large piece of paper that was laid down on the floor on top of a painters drop cloth. They then were given a cup full of tempera paint mixed with some water so it made the paint nice and drippy! We listened to classical music and began to drip and splash the color onto the paper. Since we are only using the primary colors, the students would play "musical paint" and trade colors when the music would stop- this way the students would be able to layer the colors on top of each other and watch the colors blend and mix together.

The paintings turned out beautifully, and the students couldn't wait to take them home! Check out some pictures below: