Group Art Ideas to Inspire and Challenge

Sometimes at Cheap Joe's, we love tackling unique group art ideas. We also understand that coming up with those group art ideas can be challenging whether you are an art teacher, student, or simply encouraging creativity around you. You might have noticed that I've been absent lately, and I apologize for that! We've been busy working hard here at Cheap Joes, but now that I have a moment, I have something exciting to share that might inspire you!

For the past month, we've also been working on a group art idea centered around the beautiful painting, A Wheatfield with Cypresses, by Vincent Van Gogh. Our group art idea was to re-imagine this gorgeous classic painting into a collaborative project done between 36 different artists, and it's finally finished!

So how did we do it, and how can you do something similar?

1. Planning
First, we chose a famous painting. In this case, A Wheatfield with Cypresses, by Vincent Van Gogh. Next, one of our talented Graphic Designers, Erin, collected the names of all the artists interested in participating and divided the painting into equivalent sections. You can see the divided section of the artwork that I chose, circled below.

2. Sectioning
Once every artist was assigned a section, we sent each of them an 11"x14" Joe's Prime Cradled Painting Panel along with a printout of their section, and then the painting as a whole for further reference.

We chose to-scale printouts of each section to help us ensure that our edges would line up as seamlessly as possible without a mess of crooked designs.

Here's Erin, hard at work, distributing panels and printouts for all the artists.

And below, here's one of our fantastic Marketing Assistants, Lori, providing much-needed group art support and unique flare. 

3. Create!
This part of the process is, in my opinion, the most fun. Each artist is free to recreate their painting section in their style or medium of choice.

In my case, I decided that I wanted to make sure my panel lined up with its neighbors as much as possible, so I grabbed a piece of Saral Wax-Free Transfer Paper. Next, I placed the transfer paper between the panel and my printout to trace the major lines to get a good basic shape, paying attention to the bars along the edges the most. 

Though you can't really see it well in the image above due to the angle, the lines came out perfectly crisp, which is excellent. I've got a solid base down and am ready to choose paints. 

I decided to go with acrylic paints and grabbed an assortment of our Joe's Prime Really Good Lightfast Acrylic colors that mostly matched the colors I saw in my panel. (I say mostly because I knew to match better, I needed to mix colors for the perfect shades I wanted.) 

I mixed a combination of Bright Aqua Green, Light Blue Violent, and Titanium white to create the shades I felt matched best.

I began with an even layer of a mixture of teal, and while it was wet, I quickly added a few dollops of Titanium White for blending.

I chose to add white within the teal so that I could mimic the almost chunky, 3D, and heavy strokes found in the painting, something that Van Gough is most famous for, and I wanted to emulate that as closely as I could. 

I mixed up some purple clouds for my finishing touches and added the very top corner of the cypress tree that I had in my section.

I wanted to give my panel a bit more of a personal touch, something in my own style, so I considered doodling over the basic outlines of my panel. I wasn't sure yet, so I decided to test my idea without ruining the panel to prevent making a mistake I couldn't return from.

I decided to tape a sheet of 11"x14" Polyester Film over my panel and began doodling on that instead.

I began by just lining the major shapes of my brush stroke texture, and I really enjoyed that effect on its own. But I decided to try and take it a step further and began to doodle lines in some of the corner sections. 

I eventually realized that I felt as if the little circles were so close together that they began blocking out entire sections of the painting underneath. I tried a second attempt at circles on a larger scale with a different shape, and I thought it looked much better. 

I was still experimenting, so I continued this process until I mainly had one corner covered where I could take a break, stand back, and gauge my feelings on what I had done so far. I ultimately decided that the doodling of shapes made it far too busy and scrapped my polyester sheet.

I did, however, learn that I really loved the way everything looked by being lined in a simple black. So I took my black brush-tip Pitt Artist Pen and decided to go over my lines, but this time directly on my painting.

Above is the finished, lined image of my section of the painting and all that was left was to wait to see what the other artists in our group did with their pieces before putting it all together.

Here's how it turned out!

As you can see, everything lined up so well! I am really impressed with the talent and different interpretations and artist styles on each of our separate panels having turned into a cohesive and natural-looking finished group art piece.

It's incredible to see one of our inspiring group art ideas being hung up and displayed as part of an exhibition in the Blowing Rock Art and History Museum. If you get the chance, drop by the Blowing Rock Art and History Museum today to experience fantastic art!

Collaborative art ideas are a great way to promote and foster community and learn new group art skills, so we highly encourage you to take a group art idea and run with it!