Today’s GTG Workshop is a colourful and fun activity for a cold and grey day – making a beautiful abstract sun collage, inspired by legendary African-American artist and teacher Alma Thomas. Chloe Morrison guides you through step-by-step, and you can download the worksheet too!
You will need:
- A sheet of white paper or card
- A pencil
- A ruler
- Glue or Pritt Stick
- A pair of suitable scissors
- Coloured paper (alternatively, you can use paint sample cards, scraps of fabric, or magazine clippings)
- A circular or cylindrical object to trace around, e.g., a tin, jar, glass, bottle or vase
About the artist
Alma Woodsey Thomas (1891 – 1978) was an African American abstract painter. Her works are renowned for their distinctive brushstrokes and exuberant use of colour. Alma Thomas applied vivid shades of paint to her canvases in short, precise patches, creating irregular, striking patterns. She would often arrange these marks in vertical stripes or concentric circles.
In Thomas’s circular works, rings of colours appear to radiate out from a central point, like rays of light emanating from the sun.
You can see more of Alma Thomas’s paintings on the Smithsonian American Art Museum website.
Funded by Community Foundation NI.
