Today my little campers were transported back to the 1800s which was the time period in which Winslow Homer lived and painted. I wanted them to get a feel for what life was like back then and picture what could have influenced someone in those times and so influenced how the art at the time looked. I found this interesting video which does a lot better job that me chattering away ever could! Then it was time to be introduced to the artist of the day! Winslow Homer is recognized as one of the greatest American watercolour artists of all time, and while he painted on many different subjects, he is best known for his skill in portraying varying seascapes. So it seems only fitting that we try to imitate his mastery in this area as well! We used the painting below as our inspiration and the children were directed on how to first lay out the drawing and then to layer on the watercolour to build up the scene and create a beautiful finished product reminiscent of Homer's The Water Fan. This was the first time some of these children have used watercolour paints and of course many were at first intimated by the need to draw the man in the boat, but they all produced good results!
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My Thursday afternoon Picassos were treated to the same intro to my all-time favourite artist... to see how our class went see here. If you want to get to the pictures for the day I don't blame you :) They are pretty fantastic!
There is a poster of Van Gogh's Starry Night painting hanging on my wall in the art room and a couple of the students have been asking constantly when we were going to paint it. I thought it was time to tackle it today! But of course, we can't just jump into painting this masterpiece without a bit of knowledge on Van Gogh and how he came to paint the way he did. This painting looms so large in the art world that it warrents a lot of discussion and the children were very interested in talking about why Van Gogh used the colours he did, why his brush strokes are so strong and how he created pattern within his art to evoke feelings, form and even temperature! Next they took a look at this animated video of the painting to set the mood for getting down to work!
Today the Picassos were introduced to the artist Paul Cezanne. He experienced many setbacks in his artistic career and yet he persevered to become one of the masters of art in his time. His use of colour and focus on form and placement is what we focused on in this lesson, but there is really so much more to discover in his work that this surely is just an introduction! After looking at the video of Cezanne a loose composition of fruit and a vase was placed on each table for them to practice drawing from real life. The Picassos drew the shapes in using black tempera paint in order to get a feel for drawing loose form without focusing too much on details. They drew a line to separate the top from the bottom of the page and then got down to painting in the picture using more tempera paints.
Finally they added value and form by using pastels . This part was transformative and they really enjoyed seeing the simple shapes take on more depth just by adding darker values and focusing on light! It's Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago so I wanted to bring some of our traditional mas characters into the art room today. There is such a wide variety to choose from but I settled on the colourful and bombastic Pierrot Grenade as much for the glorious use of colour as for this character's notorious oratory skill! So we talked a little about the characters they were familiar with and then watched this video of a Pierrot Grenade in action :) I also wanted them to see some images of artwork created by local artist Rebecca Foster. She has rendered the Pierrot Grenade masterfully and this is what we used as inspiration for our work today! Image credit: Saatchi Art Thursday Picassos take on the Pierrot Grenade! This afternoon the Picassos were given a little assignment... not a test... an assessment! Of course it took the form of a cool little painting assignment. I demonstrated how to draw the three cats in the style of Laurel Burch and when everyone had their cats on the page they were told how they were to complete the picture! These were the instructions;
I must say I am pretty impressed with my little Picassos. This assignment not only tests some introductory art skills, it is also a test of how well they can follow instructions (which as we all know is not limited to the art room!) Take a look at our results! Thursday Picassos were put to the test next and they rose to the challenge :) Take a look at their work!
So it's the week of Halloween and I thought it would be great to get the Picassos doing something a little witchy.. lol. But instead of just painting a boring old witch we turned it into a lesson in Picasso... Pablo Picasso that is! So I gave them a little intro to the work of Picasso, they'll definitely have to revisit their namesake, but this short intro video is enough to get them started on our Picasso inspired witches! We also looked at these 10 famous Picasso paintings just because this type of art is so unfamiliar... I wanted them to get a feel for what it could look like so when they started to paint their witches they wouldn't feel the need to try to 'correct' their art to make it conform! They drew half the face in profile and the other half looking straight ahead and we worked on black paper today. Take a look at the results :) My Thursday afternoon Picassos were a little reluctant to get into this weird faced witch.. lol.. but after they learnt a little more about their namesake and understood that Picasso didn't paint the way he did because he wasn't good at classical painting but rather he was such a master that he dared to revolutionize the way art was interpreted and presented they gave in and decided to try their hand at the Picasso-inspired witch :)
Wassily Kandinsky may have been born centuries ago on the other side of the world but he is still one of the easiest artists to appeal to little ones thanks to his masterful use of colour and geometric shapes. Adapting his use of concentric circles into art lessons for children is probably one of the most common ways of getting children into Kandinsky but that's because it works! Once again, the children took in a video of the artist's work before jumping into our project for the day :) Take a look at our Kandinsky snails!
Today my Picassos took a look at George Rodrigue's Blue Dog or Loup Garou. They looked at this video to get a feel for who this artist is and why he would paint a blue dog! I think they really enjoyed it. Of course the jumped right in after that! They drew their dogs first with pencils then traced with oil pastels and then we used only primary colours to paint our versions of the blue dog. Take a look... Thursday Picassos joined in on the Blue Dog action! Take a look...
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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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