More Starting Ideas, and Back to Basics with Tempera (Ep. 432)

Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for art teachers. This show is produced by the Art of Education University, and I’m your host, Tim Bogatz.

I wanted to bring on Kyle Wood today for a lot of reasons, really. But mostly because I just enjoy talking to him. But I thought he could offer some good insight and some good advice based on a couple of articles that he has put together recently and a couple of articles that will be published in the near future.

One of his articles is all about neurographic drawing that published earlier of this summer, and I think that’s a great activity for kids at the beginning of the year. We’ll chat about that a little bit. He also has a back-to-basics article, which is part of a bigger theme that we’re doing on the AOEU Magazine. You can find that on the website. It’s just a series of articles where we break down topics, processes, and materials for teachers to learn about, but also talk about how to teach it.

And so the goal is to help new teachers, new to art, and new to the art classroom, but also be a refresher for veteran teachers just looking for new perspectives or giving them the chance to try something new. So there’s a lot on the magazine on the website coming soon. Just a ton of articles breaking down various forms of printmaking. Kyle doing tempera cakes, which we’re going to talk about. I think he’s also doing something on clay, something on neon colors.

Christina Brown, who’s on the podcast often, is going to talk about cyanotypes and photography. I think there’s one on observational drawing. Just a ton of great stuff coming. So check out those back-to-basics articles that will be published over the next couple of months here.

Now, one last thing before we start the conversation with Kyle. If you are a NOW Conference fan and you want to join us at the end of January for the Winter NOW Conference, the AOEU website has super early bird pricing right now where you can get $50 off your registration. You can attend the Winter Conference for just $99. When you check out, use the code WINTER99. Like I said, that gives you $50 off. You can find everything you need to know about the conference. You can register with that discount at theartofeducation.edu/now, and you have until the end of August.

All right, Kyle is here. He is ready to chat. So let me bring him on now.

Kyle Wood, welcome back to the show. How are you?

Oh, I’m doing well. Thank you so much for having me again.

Well, you always have lots of exciting things to talk about. Now, you have new articles that you’ve written that we need to talk about, so there’s a lot to chat about. Before we dive into that though, I’d just love to know how you’re feeling. Everybody’s going back to school soon, so I’m kind of just registering with everybody, checking in, seeing how they’re doing. How’s the summer been for you? How are you feeling right now as you’re getting ready to go back to school?

I’m one of those people who is happy to be going back. I miss the routines and the structure quite a bit. And honestly, it’s less pressure to be teaching other people’s children than trying to feel like I’m productively engaging my own. I worry so much about that summer slide. I’m trying to do stuff with my kids to keep them thinking and keeping them engaged. I’m teaching my son to play guitar, and I took my kids to the Art Institute yesterday, and they are ready to go back to school. They’re done with my attempts to use some things.

They’re tired of you. Oh, that’s fair. That happens. And as a parent, I worry about that as well. But then I realized that my parents just used to ignore me for the entire summer and I turned out all right. So I don’t know if we need to put quite so much pressure on yourself, but I know where you’re coming from with that, so I understand. So let me ask you though, as the school year is coming up, is there anything new that you’re wanting to try in your classroom this year or any ideas that you’re exploring a little bit more?

I am really focused right now. I’m thinking through how I’m going to make an art show in the spring. We’ve got the Art Show Secrets YouTube series.

Oh my God, I’m so excited about just following that all year long.

Oh, I know. And I wrote an article about prepping for the art show and thinking these things through. And in the process of doing that, it got me rethinking like, “I really should be doing a better job with art shows and prepping.” And so I am going really ambitious this year. I want to rethink the way that I collect kids’ work digitally. And instead of having so much about the individual portfolios, I want to focus on building class slide decks with different assignments and stuff so that when the art show rolls around, I can have like, “Scan this QR Code,” to see everybody in the class and what they did on this project or this month or whatever, and make it also available so that you can show family who’s out of town and all that sort of stuff.

It’s like a military operation right now, thinking through the logistics of how will I gather all those components throughout the whole year. Because the secret to the art show is you don’t plan it in the spring, you plan it in the fall.

Yeah, unfortunately, that is very true. God, that sounds like a lot of work, but that also sounds like you’re going to have an amazing end result for it. So hopefully, that works out well for you. But yeah, I think you’re right, and I think it’s good for you to, I don’t know, start checking in with those things and start thinking about that right now. That’s a veteran teacher move right there just to start worrying about the art show when August rolls around.

Well, my thing is I want stuff to be routines. You know what I’m saying?

Yeah.

Somebody said like, “You know a great coach because they don’t have to say anything during the game. They’ve already laid all the groundwork during practice.” And I kind of look at the art show is not a push in the spring of let’s create an illusion that we did something great this year. I want it to be the natural result of just showcasing all the stuff we’re doing throughout the year. So that’s kind of where my head’s at right now.

Yeah, that’s a great way to phrase it. That’s a great way to think about that. So I appreciate that. Okay. So I wanted to talk to you. You’ve been writing a lot, you’ve been sharing a lot of really great ideas. And so I had a couple I wanted to ask you about. The first one is your article that you wrote on neurographic art. I think that was back in June.

I love the article. I love doing neurographic art myself and with kids. It’s creative. It’s mindful. There’s not really a fear of failure, which is something I very much appreciate. And so putting those things together, I was just thinking it would be a really good activity for the beginning of the year, just sometime in the first few weeks of school. So can you talk about that a little bit? Can you explain neurographic art, what it is, and how to do it, and maybe your thoughts on whether you think that’s a good activity or a good project for the beginning of the year?

Okay. So I think it is a great project for beginning of the year testing season, anytime when there seems like there’s a lot of stress going on and you need something that doesn’t have a lot of explanation. So here’s my very quick explanation of neurographic art. It comes from sort of the art therapist’s tool set. The idea with graphic art is you start with a drawing. It can be any sort of drawing. It can be something representational. It can be something non-objective. It can be just a squiggly line that loops around the page. But then the key and I cannot believe how simple this was. When I first read about it, I was like, “That can’t possibly work.”

You just go in and you look for all the sharp corners in the drawing in the doodle and you just round them out. And it is one of those things where when I first read about it, it felt like this is one of those click-baity. That one weird trick that’ll make you relax.

Correct. Right.

And I was so surprised by how soothing it can be. And I think it’s because it is a very simple method. All you’re doing is rounding out the corners. And I don’t think it’s the rounding per se that is the thing that makes the difference. I think it’s more about the fact that it’s a repetitive process. You focus on that process and you start to feel something happening. Where you get a little bit more focused, you get into this different mindset. I could feel the shift happening as I was creating my sample pieces and my project stuff and trying to get the camera right for the reels.

And it’s like normally when I’m doing that stuff, I’m so focused on where’s my lighting? Where’s the shadow? Where’s the camera? Am I getting this right? But with the neurographic art, I actually really struggled to make my stuff for the art ed photos and reels because it was like I was so focused on the process that I forgot about those other things, which was a relief for a moment until I looked at the camera and I was like, “Oh, it was five degrees off from where it should have been.” But that’s me.

No, that’s okay. I think that’s a good example of just getting lost in what you’re doing. And I think that’s a great indicator for what our kids can take from it too. So yeah, I love the idea of bringing it when you need something simple when kids are stressed out, those are some great times to bring that in. So I think that’s something that-

And-

Yeah, go ahead.

Well, I just wanted to add if you want to take it to a level that’s not quite so simple and bring in cultural relevance. I think a great connection is the Buddhist sand mandalas and that orientation towards process as sort of this meditative act where it’s not about the physical product, and we let go of that physical product. And you can bring in that art history and cultural connections with, again, something that is very simple at the easiest implementation of it.

Yeah, absolutely. I love teaching about mandalas, and my kids are fascinated by, like you said, the process and just the idea. They’re done differently everywhere, but I always used to teach about the Buddhist monks who would make them out of sand and then literally dump them in the river when they’re done. There’s no end product. It’s just about making them and just telling kids that story. And then it’s a very big shift in their mindset, especially kids who are just coming into art for the first time. There doesn’t have to be a great end product. You just enjoy the process. And it’s fun to see their reactions to that. So that’s always a good one to teach as well. So I like that.

Okay. Next question for you. On the Art of Ed, we’re doing a bunch of back-to-basics articles where we’re… For teachers and students, just kind of going back to basics for a lot of different reasons. And I guess for you, I know you’ve written an article or two, but why do you think it’s important to revisit those ideas? Go back to basics for students and for teachers. What do we gain from taking that direction of building up, going back to the starting blocks, and building up from there?

Well, I think if we’re being honest, we’ve all got gaps in our knowledge. You know what I’m saying?

Mm-hmm.

I mean teaching art, you’re teaching about stuff from all cultures all around the world, throughout history in all media. Nobody’s an expert in all of that sort of stuff.

Yes. Yes.

I found myself, maybe was it a year ago that you and Janet Taylor were doing this series of what new teachers need to know. And I was sitting there in my car like, “It’s not just new teachers. I’ve been doing this for a while and I’m finding stuff that I maybe forgot about, maybe moved away from.” Because one of the things that I found difficult because I know you and I are both similarly minded in that we like to try new stuff, and you have said, you would throw away 90% of your lessons every year.

Yeah, not quite that high but yes. Yes, I always try new things for sure.

And I think the thing is, what becomes boring and routine to me is new to students. And you always have to be mindful of that like, “Just because the knowledge is in my head doesn’t mean other people share that.” But the back to basics thing I think was really helpful because when we really focus on these different media or techniques or other just basic stuff, when we get down to that foundational knowledge, we understand things differently.

I started to really nerd out and like, “What are the ingredients to make a paint? And how does clay get from the ground to my classroom?” And just understanding that material, I kind of understood it differently. And thoroughly running down what makes something blow up? Is an air bubble going to do it or is it not? And then finding out the air bubble itself won’t do it, but it does affect the airflow for drying things out. And I like knowing that stuff because it helps me to be better at the lessons that I’m currently teaching and helps me figure out where there’s an opportunity to do something unexpected.

Yeah, I like that idea. I was just thinking, now that you mentioned that, I want to go back and be like the Master Alchemist mixing all of the paints together, and then I want to talk for a long time about what moisture and clay actually does. And there are so many things that are great for us to know, but maybe don’t translate to kids. And I think that that’s always a challenge to figure out what of this information do they need to know. How do I present it to them? But then like you said, just having all of that background knowledge can inform so many different things that you do.

And like you said, it makes you a better teacher because you have a better understanding of where things are coming from, how you can put lessons and instruction together, and plan everything that you’re going to do. So can we do a deep dive then into tempera cakes? Because I know you have an article upcoming on tempera cakes. And so I guess I would love to know just what are we looking for in that article, and just anything you want to share about how you’re using tempera cakes, how you’re teaching with them, any fun facts that you learned while researching, just any of those ideas? What are we looking for in that article?

Well, so for me, tempera cakes have always been a constant in my classroom. And it’s the kind of thing that it’s like the oxygen in the room. You don’t notice it. It’s just always there. But one of the first things I thought about when I started to do this, it’s like, “Well, I know why an oil paint is called an oil paint. But what even is the tempera? Where does that name even come from and what does that mean?”

And maybe this was obvious to you and others, but it comes from tempering things. So temper something is sort of you’re adjusting the consistency and getting it to that desirable consistency. And so tempera paints are just like, they’re all water-miscible and can be adjusted to the consistency that you want. And so that was just a fun little fact that I was like, “Huh.” Because you also hear about, well, egg tempera, the classic Renaissance thing.

Oh, classic egg whites and making paint out those but yeah.

But yeah, I mean, we’re not cracking an egg into our paint these days.

Right. And you moved me on that.

And so why are these still the same medium if we’re using a different binder? And for me, that was really interesting because I like etymology, I guess. I always find that stuff interesting because a little bit informative. It tells you a little bit about the material to understand the terms and where they come from, and what they really mean and signify.

But in getting back to basics, I’m researching this and I found out, “Okay, we don’t have to worry about it. It’s not eggs. That’s not what’s making these things smell over time if you’ve got a bottle of tempera that’s been stale on the shelf.” But they’re all going to be water soluble or water miscible. But they’re going to be able to be at different levels of viscosity. And we’re always looking at a paint is going to be a pigment, the colored stuff, the binder that holds it together, and some sort of dilution agent that’s going to thin it out and let it flow. And so then, I went down some rabbit holes in looking at like, “Well, what can I do with this sort of stuff?”

Yeah, yeah. Well, and I feel like that’s the perfect encapsulation there of just nerding out on a deep dive of the history and the alchemy of putting that together. But you’re not going to share that with your kids, but you know how to explain it simply. And you have to just translate that from what’s personally interesting to what kids can understand and remember. So I think that’s good.

But if we can dive back into the nerdy side of this, I’m also really intrigued by the idea of making your own tempera cakes. And so I would love for you to share anything about that. I don’t need you to share all of your secrets, but is it really doable, and is it really worth my time to make?

Okay. So I would say yes and yes.

Okay.

I started thinking about the DIY tempera cakes because I came across something where someone had a blog post years ago about how they tried to make their own temper cakes and it just didn’t work. And I was like, “It seems like it should be workable.” And I guess to do just a little bit about how much I nerd out on this stuff. My other podcast Art Smart, I did an entire season where I talked to manufacturers about different stuff.

Yeah.

And how they… So I talked to the people from Prang and shout out to my good friends over there who gave me so many things. But in the process of writing this article, I started to research more and more like, “Why can’t it? Why does it fall apart?” And it ended up being my reel for the Instagram thing. One minute video of this is how you make your own tempera cakes.

I don’t think I’m going to be given away too much if I say it’s like a three-ingredient recipe. You can go on your favorite rainforest-themed online retailer if you want, and you can search for powdered pigments along with gum arabic. It’s just basically even amounts of gum arabic and pigment plus a little bit of water. You stir in the water just a little bit at a time and it quickly becomes a paste that you can then spoon out and put into a plastic mold, ice cube trays, that kind of stuff. And it dries out and it’s great.

The thing I really like about making your own is long-term there’s savings in terms of it’s cheaper if you’re mixing up your own stuff. It’s expensive to buy a jar of pigment, but it goes so far in making these things. And then, the really cool thing is you can mix in all sorts of stuff. You can mix in glow-in-the-dark powders. You can mix in glitter. You can-

I was just going to ask about glitter. Yeah.

… get all that stuff that all the kids are going to want. You can mix just the right color palette for the students. And we all know you run out of blue more than any other color, so you can mix up big batches of replacements of all those colors that you run low on. It is wonderful, and it is super easy. It took me five minutes to gather the ingredients, mix it up, and put it into the mold. And then just let it sit out for, I don’t know, I checked on it like a week later, and it was good to go.

Okay. All right. I’m fascinated by all of the possibilities here. So this may be my next project. I like that. Then, Kyle, I guess just last thing before I let you go. Anything else coming up that we should keep an eye out for, either on your own podcast or what you’re doing with AOEU?

Well, I am really excited. At the end of this month, at the end of August, my tempera cakes article is coming out. But Lindsay, let me go deeper diving into two other things where I’m going to be doing… Right now, I’m writing articles about clay getting back to basics, and then I’m writing an article on fluorescent colors and neon stuff.

Ooh, okay.

Which as someone who grew up in the 1980s and nineties, I am so excited about this. And then outside of the AOEU, I think I’ve mentioned to you, October’s going to be five years of my podcast Who ARTed.

Yes. Congratulations on that. That’s awesome.

And in October, I have some really big interviews. I’m super excited. I got to talk to the curator of San Francisco’s Fine Arts Museum about their Cassatt exhibit, which is opening in October. And then I actually talked to Reggie Laurent, the keynote speaker from the NOW Conference this summer. He agreed to slum it and talk to me, and that interview is going to be coming out.

That will be awesome.

So I’m so excited about that.

Yeah, that’s very cool. Well, I mean, he talked at NOW about how much he loves art teachers, so I’m not surprised He is happy to come on an art teacher podcast. So congrats on that. We will definitely keep an eye out for it. So Kyle, thank you so much for the interview, for all of the ideas, the inspiration to make my own tempera cakes. But good luck for you starting the school year, and we’ll keep an eye out for articles and podcasts coming up.

Thank you so much for having me.

Look for Kyle’s stuff on the website and on social and look for all of our back-to-basics articles coming up over the next few weeks. I will also put a direct link to Kyle’s article about neurographic drawing and also share an old NOW Conference presentation from Brent Green on neurographic drawing in case that idea’s of interest to you. But I hope that you have found some ideas in the conversation today, and I hope you can bring them to your classroom in the coming weeks.

Art Ed Radio is produced by the Art of Education University with audio engineering from Michael Krocker. One last reminder for you. If you are a NOW Conference fan and you want to come to the Winter Conference at the end of January and beginning of February, we have super early bird pricing on the website with $50 off. You can use the code WINTER99 for $50 off and make it to the Winter NOW Conference for just $99. Hit up theartofeducation.edu/now to find whatever information you might need and to go ahead and register that code, the WINTER99 code. And the discount will be available until the end of August, and I hope you can take advantage.