(upbeat music) - Hello, early learners.

And welcome back to the art room.

We've been home for a little while over winter break and we're back today.

And let's sing our good morning song.

♪ Hello nice to see you everyone ♪ ♪ Hello nice to see you everyone ♪ ♪ Hello to you ♪ ♪ Hello to you ♪ ♪ Hello to you ♪ ♪ Hello to me ♪ ♪ Hello nice to see you everyone ♪ Well, boys and girls we're meeting a new artist today.

Some of you may have heard of Grandma Moses.

And she did kind of childlike art.

Well, the artist we're meeting today is kind of like Grandma Moses.

And I had never studied her in art school.

But I started studying her and I thought, "Well, her birthday is going to be on Wednesday, let's study about her this week."

And I brought an artifact.

An artifact is like realia.

And you can hear the word real in there.

It's something that you show that is an artifact that will tell you a little bit about what I want you to see.

Now this is a kind of flower.

And it starts with the last letter of the alphabet, letter Z.

And it's called a zinnia.

And this is a zinnia.

And these are zinnias, different kinds.

And I borrowed them from my neighbor's yard.

He said, "Sure, come on over and borrow those from me."

But I think I can't borrow them because soon it will die because I'm just keeping it in this vase.

Now, the reason I'm showing you that artifact is because our artist Clementine Hunter painted Zinnias in a Pot in 1965.

We're going to read a book about her called, "Art From Her Heart".

But let's take a look at the info about her.

I thought about telling you a bunch of information about her.

But what I want to tell you first is that she lived to be 101.

101.

Let's take a look at the picture of her and the print that we're going to talk about today.

Here she is.

Clementine Hunter.

Now Clementine is spelled just like the name Clementine.

And you might've heard that song before.

It goes.

(humming) And this is Clementine Hunter with zinnias that she painted behind her and holding her little red hen.

This is the print that we're going to look at and be inspired by today, Zinnias in a Pot.

And what we'll do is draw a curve line here and a curve line here.

I'm going to put two handles on mine.

So when you do yours, you can either put handles on yours.

One handle, no handles.

You can decide.

And look how she put her signature.

It's a backward C for Clementine.

And a right side up H for Hunter.

And she connected them like it was a brand, that they might have branded some kind of animal to show which farm they're on.

Here's a photograph of a real zinnia.

And it looks just like the one I brought for us to look at today because I wanted you to see the center is here, then it has little petals, then another row of petals, and another row of petals and another row of petals.

And you can see the form because she painted.

When she paints hers it will look like this because some are dark areas and some are light areas.

And we're going to do that using pastels later.

And I brought this so that you know, if I have time at the end we'll talk about a little book called "Alison's Zinnias".

And it will show us that somebody with the first name that starts with Z like zinnias.

And everything that you do about the letter has a picture that goes with it.

And the song I wrote for this artist, it goes to the tune of Clementine.

But just listen.

You don't need to see the words 'cause I will just sing it to you today.

But it goes like this.

♪ Oh our artist Clementine Hunter ♪ ♪ Painted pictures of her life ♪ ♪ On a plantation feeding chickens ♪ ♪ Picking cotton becoming a wife ♪ ♪ Painted on bottles and on fence posts ♪ ♪ Quilted stories of her life ♪ ♪ On a plantation hanging laundry ♪ ♪ Picking pecans becoming a wife ♪ Let's take a look at the book we're going to read about her.

And you'll hear some of the things I wrote in the song are things from this story called, "Art From Her Heart".

Folk artist Clementine Hunter.

By Kathy Whitehead.

And illustrated by Shane W. Evans.

Let's take a look and see what the story is about Clementine.

It's spelled Clementine but she calls herself Clementine.

And here's her story.

Clementine waited until her work in the Big House was done and the twinkle of stars filled the night sky above the Cane River.

She was ready to paint, like the artists that she cooked for and cleaned for on Melrose Plantation.

This is called the Big House because that's where the plantation owner lived.

But Clementine lived in this little shack over on the side.

It's still there as a museum if you ever get to go to Louisiana.

But she couldn't wait for the perfect set of paints and canvas.

She used the leftovers the artists gave her.

Instead of canvas, she used window shades, glass bottles, black iron skillets, and old boards, whatever she could find.

And in the middle of her 100 years, Clementine Hunter had decided to paint.

And we can figure out what the middle of 100 is is by doing the cheer.

25, 50, 75, 100.

And 50 is the middle.

She started painting when she was 50 years old.

Let's take a look at this page.

It has cotton.

And I brought cotton from the outskirts of Fresno.

Look how it grows.

It's on a little twig.

And the cotton grows there.

And they have to pull it off of the bowl.

And that is very sharp and they have to wear gloves, but it's hard to pick with gloves.

So they cut the fingers off.

But let's see what this page says.

No one gave her lessons.

As a girl, she had never even learned to read or write.

Clementine didn't like school and she soon quit.

She told her mama, she would rather pick cotton.

Here she is.

They made her in full color and the rest of her family in the shadows.

She was the oldest, but the smallest of her six brothers and sisters.

Her nickname was Tebe, from the French words for little baby.

She called herself Clementine when she was just old enough to pick flowers and haul them home in a cart.

Now this cart is another day, we're going to be doing art where a chicken is pulling a cart full of flowers.

When Clementine decided to paint pictures, she didn't wait for the perfect art studio.

While everyone was sleeping, she created a bright colored paintings in the dim kerosene lamp.

And here she's painted a blue bird on an empty bottle.

She didn't wait to travel and seek inspiration in foreign lands.

She drew the pictures from her memory.

Scenes of life on Melrose Plantation.

Clementine thought back to days of dragging 100 pound sack of cotton down the endless rows while her children sat under a tree in the field.

She also painted memories of picking pecans in the fall.

In the big pecan groves to make extra money.

She remembered wash days.

Spent over black wash pots and clothes flapping on a clothes line.

Long days of hard work and little pay.

There were good times on the plantation and Clementine recorded them also.

And recorded means she painted those scenes too.

Couples laughing and dancing on a Saturday night, like the dance where Clementine met her husband Emmanuel.

She painted simple joys like scattering feed to a flock of hungry chickens.

Fishing for catfish and bream, which is another kind of fish with a cane pole on the Cane River to cook at a fish fry.

Clementine enjoyed fishing at the river with her grandson, but she always fished from the bank.

She didn't like getting in boats.

Clementine painted special times on the plantation too.

Pictures of couples on their wedding day, graduates waiting in line for their diplomas.

Which is a paper Clementine didn't receive until the end of her years.

And children in white robes ready for their baptism in the Cane River.

Her grandchildren walked into the river for their baptism.

Happy days that Clementine loved to paint.

Clementine didn't wait for the world to find her art.

She hung a sign at the gate that read, art-exhibit, admission, 25 cents, thanks.

People came to see her pictures which were pinned on the clothes line, and they bought them.

Friends who recognized her talent gave her paints.

They gave her paper and brushes.

They helped her find galleries that would display and sell her work.

Years later, people lined up to see her artwork at a big museum in New Orleans, Louisiana.

And here's one of hers.

That was the poster that showed that she was showing there.

Another gallery proudly displayed her work but they refused to let her in the front door of the museum.

She had to wait until after the museum was closed that she could go in and enjoy her own pictures on display.

But the laws that kept her out would soon be gone like feed thrown to the chickens.

The art poured from Clementine's heart and her mind.

And it gives us a window to her life on the plantation.

A window we would have missed if Clementine Hunter had waited for the perfect time to paint.

Now that story tells you where I got the information to make that little song I wrote.

Now we're going to begin painting the picture of Zinnias in a Pot.

I'm going to use the zinnias for my inspiration.

Plus I will bring down Clementine's picture that she did and use it for my inspiration to do mine.

So if you have white paper, I taped mine to a piece of paper because when you take the tape off it'll make a little frame on it.

Today I'm going to paint it.

And then tomorrow or one of the days this week, I will use some chalk pastels to add some shadows.

So it looks more realistic.

Now we might want to bring down our inspiration.

I'll try not to get paint on it.

Now how I'm going to start is by using a pencil to first draw the pot.

And it's kind of a chubby pot.

So I'm going to do a curve line.

I'm doing my pencil marks dark so you can see it.

And that ends up being like a letter C. And I'm going to do another one on this side about the same curve.

I'll do a curve line at the bottom to put the bottom of the vase or the pot.

And I will make a little light curve line to say where the stems will start coming out for the flowers.

I'm going to make a handle.

And it's another C. And inside that C, I'll make a smaller C. And I'll do a C on this side for a second handle.

I wanted to do a second handle even though those picture we're looking at, she only has one.

But let me turn and show you what I've done so far.

I wonder if the shadow, oh there.

If I bend it a little you can see.

See how I made a pot, a chubby pot with two handles.

I think I'll paint it right away so you can see.

But what I'm going to do is put circles around how many zinnias I want to make and how big.

I'm making them pretty big.

Because I think they'll fill the pot up and make it look pretty.

And I'm going to do.

And some even went off the edge a little.

I'll put one in the middle.

And maybe one down here that runs behind the handle.

Now I'll get my paints.

I put mine in a egg carton so that I can mix it up.

I want to make some of these most of, oh I stuck my thumb right in it.

Most of these are shades of red and pink.

So I'm going to mix up some of that in the lid of my other old egg carton that I have here.

And I'll use my paintbrush to start.

Now, I wanted to tell you if I want to make pink, I'll first use my white and put it in the lid.

And then I'll mix in some red or some magenta to make my color bright.

And I'm going to get magenta and make my pink.

So here we go.

And I'm mixing it up in the lid.

And I'll show you.

I'm going to start on the outer side of the circle to make the petals 'cause I told you the petals overlap.

So I'm just going from the middle and out, middle and out, middle and out.

The middle of the flower really has some little yellow polka dots.

And I'll put those in at the end.

But these, and then I might add a little darker.

And add that to it.

And go in between those spaces open.

Still adding more.

And you see how I'm doing rows and rows of the petals.

And then I'll put a little darker in the center so that you can see the rows and rows of the flowers.

And I'll go in, in, in.

Going around.

And then at the end, I'll put that yellow in there.

I think I will make this next one a little redder.

So I'll add red and pink together in my lid.

So it will have a little bit different from the one next to it.

And maybe a little tiny bit of white.

So I'm mixing up my colors.

And I'll do another one here.

Oh yeah, it's a little different.

Good.

I want it to be different because when you overlap it like that, it ends up being where you can't tell where one flower ends and another begins.

So I'm going out, out, out just like that.

And then the second row, out, out, out.

From the center, out, center, out, center, out.

I'm gonna put a little more dark in here.

So it has a little different shade.

And go out, out, out.

Out, out, out.

I think my next one I'll use mostly white and just a tiny bit of the pink in there so it'll have a different color.

And so when it's next to this one, it will look like it's a little bit different.

Oh there, that one's kind of like bubblegum.

I'm going out again.

Making my petals in a circle around.

With a little more white in it.

Boys and girls, if we don't get to finish this, you know you can finish it up and take a picture of it.

Would you?

Or if you're working on it and send it to me at the studio, I love to see what you're doing.

I'm gonna use this one straight out of the pot so it will be really dark.

And the studio will send me the picture and let me take a look at it.

And maybe I could even write back and tell you something else about your art.

I know a lot of people have been sending it to me at my Facebook page.

And their teacher sends me pictures of their art.

And I write back to them and we get to see each others work and talk about what you did differently and what was fun on there.

Do you see?

I'm still going around in a circle.

I think I'll paint my pot so that that will be ready too.

I wanna make sure we get a chance to see how that works.

And I wanted to make sure that I showed you that I'm not really doing much shading because I'm going to go back in when this is dry and use my pastels to add the shadows.

You'll notice, I'm really being inspired by her work.

I'm even making my pot kind of the same color as hers 'cause I liked that blue next to the pink.

But you can make yours any color you want.

You know that boys and girls.

You can start out with a different color of paper.

This is all your own art.

So you can do whatever you think looks beautiful.

'Cause that's what I'm doing.

Even though I'm inspired by her, she didn't have two handles on hers.

She only had one.

But I knew what I wanted to try.

And I'm still painting mine around and around.

And if you keep your paint brush up high and don't put so much paint on it, we always say treat your paint brush kind of like a ballerina's legs and just dip her toes into the paint.

And if you start painting across back and forth, it shows that it's kind of rounded even before you add the chalk pastel for shadows.

I want to paint my background too.

And you know I really want to do it.

Kind of yellowish like hers was.

But you remember, if you like the white background, just leave it as white.

When I take the tape off you're gonna be so interested that it makes it have like a little matte on it.

Do you notice how I'm painting back and forth in a curve line so it makes it look like a curve vessel?

Vessel is another name for the pot.

It's a vessel.

There.

Oh, that's looking pretty good Mrs. Readwright.

Got that in there.

And I think it will be even nicer once I get my shadows in.

Let me get this paint on here and do my forward letter C. Make it have about the same curve.

Oh, that looks pretty good.

Okay, I think I can go back to doing my zinnias.

Put my paint brush away.

I'll get out a fresh paint brush so that it's not all watery.

Even though I did bring some paper towels in order to wipe off my brush.

So anytime you clean your brush, remember to wipe it off because when you go to paint, all that water still is stuck to the bristles, and it'll make your paints be watery.

And I don't think that you will want it to be that way 'cause then you'll see through the paper.

And it makes it not as beautiful.

Still going around the edges.

Getting myself in there like that.

When I had told you about that "Alison's zinnias," that book, it's also, when I taught high school, I taught the children this kind of jump rope chant.

And it says, A, my name is Alice.

So you say your name if your name starts with a letter A. I'm gonna marry Arty, we're gonna sell apples and live in Alabama.

Or whatever place you can think of that starts with the letter A.

So you could do that.

Think of what your special letter is.

Mine is C. Because my first name is really Claudia.

Readwright is my last name.

But if I say, C my name is Claudia, I'm gonna marry Carlos, we're gonna sell cotton and live in California.

So you can just make up your own little rhyme.

Can you think of what your letter and what your name is?

Like I have a brother Brad.

And I could do.

B my name is Brad, I'm gonna marry Barbie, we're gonna sell bananas and live in Baltimore.

What about D?

D my name is David, I'm gonna marry Darla, we're gonna sell dogs and live in Delaware.

See how everything started with the letter D?

Let's try F, E is hard 'cause those letters, there aren't very many E names that I can think of that go together.

But F is a goodie.

I'm going to start a little bit of my leaves and stems.

Oh, I have some green left at the lid from a time I painted before.

So I'm gonna put a little water just on there.

Remember I told you, that's why I don't clean this very often is because I like to have the old paints and colors.

I could put some dark green leaves.

Boys and girls, while I'm doing this.

I'm thinking, "Oh, I don't want the end to come and me not tell you about tomorrow."

So tomorrow when we do the chicken hauling flowers, you'll need to bring white paper, brown paper to make a hen, brown paper for the wagon, and scissors, glue stick, pastels because we might be adding our shading to this painting.

And also you'll want some for the picture that we do of the chicken hauling the flowers.

Let's do our goodbye song while I finish doing my background.

And we'll say.

♪ Oh it's time to say goodbye to all my friends ♪ ♪ Oh it's time to say goodbye to all my friends ♪ ♪ Oh it's time to say goodbye ♪ ♪ Give a smile and wink your eye ♪ ♪ Oh it's time to say goodbye to all my friends ♪ For the "Alison's Zinnias", did you think of your rhyming or your alliteration, the things that start with your same letter?

You can do that with your family later on today.

You can say, "Mama, your name starts with a P." Let's say, P, my name is Patty, I'm gonna marry Paul, we're gonna sell pickles and live in Pennsylvania.

It's fun to do the names and the things that start with the same letters.

Boys and girls, I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

We're gonna learn a little bit more about Clementine and how she incorporates her chicken.

I'm going to read "The Little Red Hen".

If you have a copy, bring it.

Good to see you.

I'll see you tomorrow.

Goodbye, boys and girls.

Thank you.

(upbeat music)