From contemporary artist Sandra Silberzweig we're moving to 19th Century Post Impressionist artist Henri Rosseau! Rosseau was a self-taught artist who became famous for his jungle scenes. All his artwork was created from his imagination because he never actually left his home of Paris France. The children started creating their leafy backgrounds today using a combination of techniques. They learnt all about positive and negative space and created their own stencils, they sponge painted for texture and also drew and collaged some leafy foliage to give their jungle scenes some depth. Next week they will finish off their backgrounds and our jungle inhabitants will move in, so stay tuned you don't want to miss that!
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Last week the Picassos started their abstract portraits inspired by contemporary artist Sandra Silberzweig and this week they're adding lots of colour, line and pattern to make those portraits really pop! They are also getting some practice using analagous (colours next to each other on the colour wheel) colour schemes and working with chalk pastels! To see the first part of this project -> Silberzweig Portraits
This week the Picassos looked at the work of contemporary artist Sandra Silberzweig (and incidentally learned that this just means she is still alive and creating art today, in our time). She's from Canada and loves to create colourful abstract portraits, but what's also very interesting about her is just like Kandinsky who we met last term, she also has the condition synesthesia! She wrote the following verse about how she experiences colour... I am a synesthesia goddess The children looked at some of her art pieces and we talked about how she uses the Elements of Art to enhance her creations! They got starting drawing out their abstract faces today and then outlining them with glue... next week they will add colour and pattern and complete their lovely designs! Our art this week takes a bit of inspiration from our stormy weather. I introduced the Picassos to the artist Winslow Homer and we looked at lots of his paintings of the sea. Children generally want to paint the ocean blue, but Homer's work really shows all the varied colours the ocean can be! This piece, which I'm calling Calm after the Storm was loads of fun because we used different media and techniques. I like highlighting that art can be made with different materials and in different ways, sometimes in a single piece! Here we used watercolours, tempera and acrylic paints and they used brushes and even cardboard chips as tools! The only limit on what or how you create is your imagination! My Tuesday Picassos and I were in the mood for a little more oomph so we used Tempera paints for the sky and ocean. The Picassos delved into my favorite era today... the Impressionist Era! The 1980s were golden for music and the 1800s produced some of the greatest artists of all time... simple facts in my humble opinion! 🤓 (oxymoron much 😀) Anyway, we talked about how art was changed by these artists both in terms of subject matter and in terms of style and then they attempted this little number by Claude Monet. It's called The Isle Grande Jatte and it was completed in 1878. Notice how you can see some houses across the river as well as a distant field and how Monet uses small brushstrokes and lots of tints and shades so we can imagine the light pouring through those trees and we can feel the way the artist felt standing there squinting in the sun and capturing it all for us to admire centuries later. Take a look at how my little artists did 😀 We started off this class with a little cartoon about the artist Claude Monet so my little darlings could envision something about the man whose style we were going to try to mimic! Monet painted apple trees in blossom many many times but for my Doodlebugs I thought we would focus just on the flowers and paint them huge but using his technique of blending colors right on the canvas or in this case paper! We looked at Monet's flowers and some pictures of real flowers then they drew and painted their own. They were thrilled with seeing the changes in the colours by adding more white and the results are simply gorgeous. Although I tried to get them to leave traces of white in their flowers most of them couldn't resist mixing the paint until they got a smooth lighter tint... but aah well! All in good fun! Of course they also drew leaves and cut their flowers themselves so they're getting lots of that much needed cutting practice parents 😃 Today's class was one that I really truly enjoyed, simply because the children got into the art-making process so much that it was like they were each in a bubble on their own even though we were all together in the room! I explained O'Keeffe's style to them, showed them some pictures and let them get down to it. This was also a great opportunity to practice observational drawing. Take a look... simply beautiful :) Last year the Picassos made a great tribute to their own mothers in our little art project which you can find here. This year to celebrate Mother's Day I thought they should look at other artists who have made mothers the subject of their art and so we focused on Klimt. They painted a piece inspired by Gustav Klimt's Mother and Child pictured below, so of course they took a look at a brief little bio of the artist that created so many fascinating works of art! I drew their attention to the angle of the mother's neck which really serves to exaggerate her affection for the baby in her arms. They also used Klimt's signature flowers and excessive decoration in their work so that you can easily pinpoint the reference by looking at the subject matter, the composition and the style. I really wanted them to focus on his use of patterns so I gave them lots of examples of shapes and patterns found in his art work. I think they did a stellar job! Happy Mother's Day! "Creativity takes courage" Henri Matisse This week the Picassos were introduced to artist Henri Matisse! Matisse was a French painter who produced works of art from the early 1900s right up until his death in the mid 50s. This means he was popular during the time of Picasso (their namesake) and they actually had a friendship and rivalry that kept them both on their toes! Matisse is known as a master of colour and his style of painting was actually responsible for creating a whole new movement called Fauvism. When his work was first shown French critics shunned it and likened him to le fauve or wild beast... and well the name not only stuck but Matisse managed to turn that critique that was meant as an insult into something positive that influenced a whole new generation of artists! Now isn't that a great attitude to model! The painting the Picassos recreated today was his Purple Robe and Anemones which you can see below :) The beauty of this painting is not just his use of vibrant colours but also how he manages to make everything appear flat while at the same time maintaining a separation of each surface and dimension. I got the children to draw using oil pastels instead of pencils today because I really want them to develop making purposeful lines. There is merit in erasing and fixing but when you remove the ability to do that what takes its place is mindfulness about where to go next because you know that it can't be easily changed. Tough love I guess lol... Check out the Picassos' version of this masterpiece! I think they did great especially considering we used the no pencils approach I described above. Follow me on Instagram #artypantsstudiott if you enjoy the overload of cuteness or if you want to keep up to date on what's happening at the studio!
From the moment the Doodlebugs walked into the art room they realized something was different... for one there were a bunch of strange looking tools on the tables and I guess they could just feel it in the air lol... When I explained that today we were going to make 'abstract art' in the form of painted papers my little ones were taken off guard and some of them were downright confused! Of course I saw this coming so I thought I would introduce them to the art of Jackson Pollock so they could see that art doesn't have to make 'sense' in the traditional way. As a matter of fact one of my kiddos commented during the process "miss how you going to explain that?!?" LOL needless to say I couldn't hold back the laughter. So anyway... I'm getting ahead of myself. They looked at this little intro to Action Jackson as he is affectionately called... This is one of the messiest things you can ask a child to do... smear paint all over a paper and use paint scrapers and rollers, fingers and marbles and a bunch of other curious looking things to create lines, patterns and texture... but boy is it fun! As you will see some of my Doodlebugs started off a little apprehensive but they all soon got into it and using the tools, moving around the room from table to table to test out all the rollers! While these pages are beautiful all on their own, we made them as the foundation for a ton of other projects to come. We're going to snip and cut them into shapes and images to be used in collage projects... so stay tuned for how we use our painted paper!
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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
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