Collaborative Matisse Collage

I say it every year, but the Art of Giving is one of my favorite events and a genius fundraiser! This was my 5th year to participate as an artist and it’s even more fun now that my kids enjoy it so much. This year we had 16 artist stations set up and we made $180,000 for Dell Children’s hospital. There were so many fun, interactive, collaborative art pieces this year including Max’s favorite, spirograph art! I will share more soon with details of the other 15 collaborative art pieces from the event.

Past collaborative art pieces from the Art of Giving

String art (My 1st Art of Giving)
Tissue paper art (My 2nd Art of Giving)
Spray bottle and syringe art (My 3rd of Art of Giving)
Bleeding tissue paper house (My 4th Art of Giving)
12 Collaborative art projects (All of the pieces from the 3rd Art of Giving)
11 Collaborative art projects (All of the pieces from the 5rd Art of Giving)
13 Collaborative art projects (All of the peice from the 6th Art of Giving)

Materials needed for a Matisse collage with 100’s of kids

I picked out the Mi Tientest papers individually at a local art store, but this another good option is to buy one these 10 packs of paper on Amazon. I love that the colors all coordinate and look awesome together. I like these color combos too.

I used 1 19.5 in x 25.5 in. sheet of Mi Tientest paper:

Canson #103 Dawn Pink
Canson #490 Light Blue
Canson #107 Anise
Canson #352 Orchid
Casnon #502 Bisque
Canson #350 Honeysuckle
10 pairs of scissors
3-5 foam brushes
1 bottle of matte Mod Podge
1 36 x 36 white canvas

How to make a Matisse inspired collage with 100’s of kids

Step 1- Make an example

My 5 year old son and I made a 12×12 version of the Matisse college the morning of the event. Having an example is helpful to get kids started and guide parents when they’re helping the 1-3 year old kiddos.

Step 2- Prep the materials

I cut the 6 pieces of paper into squares. I didn’t measure, but I loosely did 4×4 squares, 5×5 squares and some larger rectangles.

Step 3- Make!

For the Art of Giving, kids of all ages from the hospital and the community come and went for 5 hours. Here are a few tips I learned to best manage this the Matisse collage art:

Start with letting the kids cut shapes.
I let the kids cut as many shapes as they wanted and then arrange them on the canvas without Mod Podge.
Keep all of the scraps in a pile until the end of the project.
I only kept 1-2 foam brushes out at a time. Also, make sure to have a plastic cup or something to set the foams brush in when the kids want to go back to cutting.
I let really little kids tear paper.
Add a few randomly spaced larger shapes early on and let the kids fill in around those.

This little boy loved cutting tiny pieces of paper! He was very proud of the question mark he made and glued to the green square on the corner of the canvas!

This little girl was way into the Mod Podge and wanted me to cut shapes for her to glue down.

Step 4- Fill in

After 5 hours of collaborative creating this is what the kids and I ended up with. I took it home and my 5 year old helped me fill in the blanks spaces and do a clean coat of Mod Podge over the entire canvas.

I looked up a little history about Matisse to talk to kids about while we worked. Here are a few Henri Matisse facts. Also, I found this MoMA article about Matisse’s cut outs intersting!

Henri Matisse was good friends with Pablo Picasso.
He was alive from 1869-1954.
Henri grew up in northern France and studied to be a lawyer.
He was inspired by Van Gogh and a style of art called pointillism.
Matisse loved working with “cut outs”. He painted sheets of paper and then cut the paper into varying shapes and sizes.

Oh and here’s the final collaborative Matisse inspired art peice!

My friend, Rachel, recently did a Matisse inspired collage with her kids school and it turned out so well! She had the kids paint pieces of paper and then cut the paper into shapes and used Mod Podge to adhere the shapes to the canvas.