My Big Fat Greek Vase - Part 2

A few weeks ago I showed you some of our Greek Vases from one of our classes. Check out the lesson and the first vases here.  A few friends asked me what paint I used and were these specialty vases.  So here's the low-down:

• These were cheap vases from the art supply store, about $1 each.
• We used craft acrylic which stays on well but is more liquidy than standard acrylic and is also very innexpensive. 
• DO NOT use tempera. Parents of my younger students probably hoped I'd use something washable. It will work but it runs easily and if your vase gets wet you'll have a colorful puddle. 

Just a few more vases to display from a younger class. These students wanted to just be inspired by the traditional Greek vases but wanted to add more color. Just black and red paint didn't cut it for them. I still wanted them to understand working with a limited palette so I gave said they could add a little yellow and green to the mix. The boys wanted to add a little mythology and the girls went for color. Look how inspired!

Medusa!

Medusa #2!

One of my pre-school students also joined the bigger kids that day for a makeup craft and she wanted many colors on hers. It may not have been Greek but it is certainly fabulous!

My Big Fat Greek Vase

 

How goofy is this horse? Goofy!

After years of being dragged through museums as a child and rolling my eyes in boredom at the Greek vases I have finally come to appreciate their beauty. You know what it took? A HORSE! The Greeks could make some darned nice horses. They were pretty and simply shaped and their teeny tiny hooves appealed to me. They were sort of comical. I can always appreciate something beautiful that is also a little bit silly.

So when I showed the Picasso's Basement artists the various black and red techniques used by the Greeks to adorn their showier vases I showed them many examples featuring horses. Like these:

I had considered having them make their own vases but I don't have a kiln and I already have a two-week project planned for the near future so instead I had made a run to the dollar store for a batch of terra cotta vases. Perfect. Cheap enough to buy extras.

The only paints they were given were black and red acrylic paints. We looked at typical Greek patterns. I encouraged them to paint horses on their vases. I made an example to show them. Here it is:

My Sample Vase

But as all great artists do, they followed their hearts. One of our artists is a well known (at least in his school) authority on Greek mythology. He painted Argo, the ship for which the Argonauts were named.

                   

                        Our resident Greek Mythology expert

His original sketch for his vase

Here are some of the other gorgeous vases that were painted:

For more on Greek vase techniques please check out this excellent link at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Athenian Vase Painting