This year we took a look at how we prepare our homes for Diwali. The children drew and painted a house decorated for the occasion complete with fireworks in the sky!
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ABOUT THE MONA LISA Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa using soft outlines and heavy shading, which is a hallmark of Renaissance portraits. No one knows for sure who the Mona Lisa is a portrait of. The best guess is that she was an Italian noblewoman named Lisa Gherardini. This painting is so valuable, that it is displayed in Paris under bulletproof glass! Our version of the Mona Lisa focuses on creating value using charcoal pencils. So the kids are asked to think of areas of light and areas of shadow. We’ve also used a bright contemporary landscape as the backdrop to make it lively and more appealing for the age group. Poseidon is most well known for being the Greek god of the sea. His weapon and main symbol was the trident, a three pronged spear. Poseidon is the brother of Zeus, the sky god and the chief greek god, and Hades, the god of the underworld. As the sea god, Poseidon is the protector of sea travelers. He made calm seas and would create islands for lost travelers who pleased him. When he was offended or ignored, Poseidon caused shipwrecks and earthquakes. FUN FACT: Poseidon also has a close connection to horses. Some call him the tamer of horses and others call him the father of horses. To help with safe travels over seas people would often give Poseidon a horse to please him. We’ll finish our interpretation of Poseidon next week... A bust is the sculptural representation of the upper part of the human figure. A bust includes the head and neck and usually part of the shoulders and chest. ABOUT ANCIENT ROMAN BUSTS Roman artists were skilled at making realistic portraits of people from bronze and marble. The reason there are so many examples of Ancient Roman busts is because it was common to display busts of deceased ancestors in Roman homes during ancient times. Roman rulers and officials also commonly commissioned sculptural portraits of themselves. I challenged a few of my older gals to create a bust using portrait of themselves! They got started today creating a charcoal pencil portrait focusing on the position of features etc and in our next class they will create marbled paper for the pedestal. ABOUT MEDUSA Medusa is a monster from ancient Greek mythology. Instead of hair, her head is covered with living venomous snakes. According to legend, Medusa was a beautiful mortal who flaunted her good looks even in the face of the great Roman goddess Athena. As punishment for her brazenness Athena plagued Medusa with a hideous appearance and venomous snakes for hair! 😳 The myth was that anyone who looked at Medusa would turn into stone. Medusa was killed by the Greek hero Perseus. Many of my little artists were familiar with her and the legend so they really got into creating her likeness today! In recognition of Republic Day this year my little Doodlebugs reviewed all our national emblems but we focused on the ever captivating Scarlet Ibis! They drew and painted this gorgeous bird against the backdrop of a sunset swampy scene! This year in recognition of Republic Day the Picassos painted a beautiful scene of our national birds in their natural habitat... the Caroni Swamp and they got to choose how they wanted to compose the scene and practiced drawing the birds in different positions. They also created colorful sunset skies since these birds come out in the evening to show off their bright plumes! The Hall of the Bulls is a large hall inside Lascaux Cave. Massive drawings of bulls, some 18 feet long, stampede along the walls. ABOUT LASCAUX CAVE In 1940 a cave was discovered by teenage boys in southwest France. When they entered the cave, they were surrounded by paintings on the walls and ceilings. The paintings are estimated to be 17,000 years old. Most of these prehistoric paintings are of large animals, such as horses, cattle and bison, and were painted with black, red and yellow mineral pigments. The Stone Age people were able to see in the cave with the use of lamps made out of stone. Over 100 prehistoric lamps have been found in Lascaux Cave. We recreated the look of these stone walls by creating texture and using tones that may have been found on its surface. ABOUT CAVE OF THE HANDS Located in Santa Cruz, Argentina, Cave of the Hands is known for the hundreds of red, white, purple, yellow and brown hands stenciled on the walls. It’s believed that the hand art dates back to around 5,000 B.C. The prehistoric people used mineral pigments to make their prints on the cave walls. A few years ago I visited the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History in DC and got to see a replica of a cave painting upclose! Today the kiddos and I had loads of fun creating our own handprints and imagining what it would’ve been like to live loooooooong ago, using mineral pigments to print our hands on the walls of our cave homes! With their long tusks and shaggy fur, woolly mammoths were unique animals that lived during Prehistoric times. With the popularity of the movie Ice Age, I was inspired to use a woolly mammoth for this lesson on texture, line and space. ABOUT WOOLLY MAMMOTHS The woolly mammoth is an extinct species of the elephant. They were about the same size as the modern African elephant. Woolly mammoths were covered in fur so they were prepared for cold, especially during the last ice age. Their long tusks were useful for fighting and foraging. Woolly mammoths lived at the same time as early humans. It is theorized that they became extinct because of habitat and climate changes and being hunted by people. Fun fact: A newborn woolly mammoth calf weighs about 200 pounds! |
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Be a fly on the wall in our art room! Take a look at what we do, how we do it and the smiles that I get to see week after week :) Archives
February 2020
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