Seven area homes will be the proud owners of some new artwork this week.

The Gallery Group is hosting its first three-day summer art program for kids with Celeste Springthorpe Tsaklis as the instructor.

Tsaklis has been teaching art from her home for several years and decided to help with this program to help raise money for the Gallery Group.

The Summer Art Club was opened to students in grades one through six with students learning to create real artwork, not just craft projects.

“They are learning to be real big artists,” said Donna Jackson, director of the Gallery Group. “They’re not just making craft projects.”

Students learned how to do fish printing using tilapia and black paint with a technique known as gyotaku, an ancient Japanese printing style.

They also worked on a project with texture. They put glue in strategic places on a small canvas and then poured sand on the glue. Once it dried, they painted over the sand with watercolors to create a beach scene.

On Tuesday, they began creating an impressionist painting reminiscent of the style made famous by Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Starting with a blank canvas, they covered the entire thing in shades of blue. They then added trees, clouds and grass to the paintings before letting them rest for the day. Today, they plan to finish off the paintings by adding flowers and other final touches.

Tsaklis emphasized not using lines and structure when creating the painting, but rather using more fluid strokes and letting the forms create themselves.

To finish out the day on Tuesday, the students worked on drawing flowers with pastels similar to those created by Georgia O’Keefe. Students could work with oil pastels or chalk pastels on a sand board.

“We want parents to have something to enjoy in their homes,” said Tsaklis.

Some of the participants in the program regularly take lessons with Tsaklis in her home, but they still learned some new techniques during the program.

“I think it’s been very fun, and I’ve learned some new things,” said Austin Juno, 11, of the program.

Juno has been taking painting lessons for five years.

“Abstract, because you can do a lot of different things to abstracts. You can make it look like different things,” he said of his favorite type of painting. “You can express what you’re feeling in art.”

For other students, this is their first real art class outside of school programs. Some have participated in similar camps and were looking to improve their skills.

“I like it a lot,” said Lillian Livengood of the program. “This (the impressionist painting) is the biggest one, but I liked the watercolor, too. The coolest one was the texture. We put sand on them and painted them with watercolor. I love making stuff. People always say I’m really creative.”

The students, covered in paint, seemed to be having a good time as they added paint to their pieces of art. They even had on Gallery Group T-shirts to protect their clothes when the paint began to fly.

Part of the proceeds from the three-day camp goes to the Gallery Group to help fund projects and artists.

Contact Morgan Wall at mwall@mtairynews.com or 719-1929.