Art Education Tours

Art Education Tours and Activities

On October 19, 2018 the Brea Gallery hosted our first educational tour and art making workshop for children in an after school program nearby. The student group walked from the Brea Community Center across the street to experience the Gallery, most for the first time. We were able to show the children our current show, the 50th Annual Watercolor West International Juried Exhibit, which includes 100 different watercolor paintings! Our walk through the Gallery included discussing the paintings and explaining the various techniques the artists used. After the tour, the children got a chance to make some art of their own involving just some leaves, crayons, and watercolor paints.

We collected a variety of leaves before the tour to choose from!

We got all the young artists together at a long table and guided them through a crayon water-resistance color project. We had each child unroll the crayons of their choosing, and put autumn leaves underneath the paper they are using to make their painting. They then rub the crayon firmly over the paper, creating the imprints of the leaves across the paper. The children then painted over the crayon leaf rubbings with water color paint, the watercolors slid right off the crayon lines as they soaked into the paper, creating a crayon resistant watercolor design. Each child got to make a few of these paintings and take their artwork with them when they left the gallery, to show their work to their families.

Our second tour took place on November 2nd, to a group of children between the ages 8 to 12 years old, a bit older than the previous group. The children were shown around the gallery, in which they asked many questions about the paintings and the techniques used. Although, they were very excited about talking about what they saw in the artwork, they were even more excited to begin painting, themselves.

This time the watercolor project was to create watercolor birch trees using masking (taping off). They began with watercolor paper, and sticking long pieces of masking tape across the paper. The children then water colored the sky and ground that could go behind the trees, gliding the brushes over and across the tape. After giving the watercolors a moment to dry, they began to peel the tape slowly back and off the paper. After removing the tape, there are solid white strips that look like birch tree trunks! They added paint lines onto their birch tree trunks, to create the texture birch trees have. Every artist had time to make two paintings, and took them home with them.

Professional nature artists!

Our third tour and final tour of 2018 was on November 16th to a group of 13 children from the ages 6-9 years old. For the first half of our time together, we explores the gallery, asking questions about observation and subject matter. We discussed techniques the artists used, and their different styles that varied from one art piece to another. For the second half of our time together we worked on an art project that involved bleeding tissue paper, and spray bottles.

They each began by setting down a piece of watercolor paper and applying the cut up pieces of colored tissue paper directly onto the paper. After arranging the different colored tissue papers, we used individual spray bottles to spray water onto the tissues, allowing the colors to bleed onto the paper. After giving the tissue paper some time to dry, we pulled back the tissue paper. The children were so excited to see that the colors had remained on the paper after they pulled the tissue off. This was a messy (everyone’s hands were stained like rainbows!) but very fun activity.

The Gallery is excited for this opportunity to introduce children to the arts, especially those that might not have the opportunity anywhere else. With art in the education system often a secondary thought or in some cases cut completely, the goal of this tour program is to encourage kids to find interest and learn about art through first hand and hands-on experience.

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Interested in booking a tour for your students or grade school aged group?

Call Brea Gallery for more information: (714) 990-7731