Mosaics Inspired by Alma Thomas

Let's get inspired by Alma Thomas.

Alma was an art teacher. Alma was an artist. Alma was inspired by the colors in nature. The patterns she creates in her later work were first inspired by the shape and pattern that the light shown on her wall when it passed through the tree leaves outside her window. Her most famous artworks were created in the 60's. While Alma didn't create mosaics, her art was often compared to them. This art project I'm going to share with you will be a mosaic in the style of Alma. Think about her bright colors and her patterns and what she was inspired by. Look out your own window. What patterns and colors do you see? Does the light passing through things create unique patterns? Do any of them inspire you to want to make an artwork? Are their any patterns that you can turn into a mosaic style art piece?

now...

Let's make art.

Tiptoe Through the Tulips, 1969 Alma Thomas

I'm going to share with you some inspiration from the artist Alma Thomas today and an art activity you can do with your kids. This can be adapted to many age groups.

You can find some of Alma's artworks as well as some information about her on the National Gallery of Art's website

Look at some of her art with your child and read some of the statements about the pieces. You can also watch a short video about her life and what inspired her here.

In the text below I have some questions you might want to ask your child before they get started on their artwork to help inspire their own. For older kids you might want to do some more digging and look up mosaics and do some comparing and contrasting. If you have a child interested in light and astronomy you could connect this lesson to that and talk about her art pieces on those subjects. Another subject that could be integrated into this art project is the changing seasons Alma once said, "I say everyone on earth should take note of the spring of the year coming back every year, blooming and gorgeous."

now...

This is a great art project to do if you have lots of scrap papers that you don't like to throw away (like me). Even the smallest piece of paper can be turned into something.

What you will need:

• papers in many colors cut into small squares

• a sturdy piece of paper to put your artwork on

• glue (in this example we will use white Elmers glue and a paintbrush to apply it but you can use any kind of glue that you have.)

To start it may be helpful to organize the paper into piles of the same colors

hopefully you have an idea for a design in mind. Sketching things out can be helpful. You can even make light lines with pencil on your paper to guid you where you want to put things. Feel free to lay your pattern our first, or just go for it and see where the patterns and colors take you.

With our white school glue we found it easier to brush the glue on the area that we were planning to put things down onto first rather than glueing each little square separately. Be sure not to put glue on too big of an area or it might dry before you get to it.

Keep going until you've finished your masterpiece. Don't forget to give it a nature inspired name.

You can always adapt this art project to use paint in the true style of Alma rather than doing a mosaic. Whatever you do I'd live it if you shared it with me in the comments, or over on my facebook page!