 If you find yourself at Lopinot on a rainy night, you might be face to face with the ghost of Charles Joseph de Loppinot de la Fresilliere – a French Count who came to Trinidad in 1800 – as he roams about his estate house located in the northern village named after him. They had to find out a bit about the history of this gorgeous little house but of course I added my two cents. This week we are going to try our hands at drawing this grand old house and next week we’ll paint. This one is a slow process... lots of details and as you can imagine quite a challenge for my artists, many of whom are trying a piece with this level of detail for the first time. But if it’s one thing I’ve learned in my time teaching art to kids is that they will go as far as you lead them. So I continue to push ever so slightly, but push we must! Plus... lessons of perseverance and hard work aren’t confined to the art room! 😉
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 I came across this lovely painting by a little known artist and I just loved the viewpoint. Every Trini can tell exactly the spot this painting is done from. This is what good art does, it connects the viewer to a time or place and evokes feeling. The Warhols painted a different view of the savannah but the inspiration piece gave us a good starting point. They are also using acrylics with this piece so they get to use a different texture paint and see how that affects their painting. Of course we also get to immerse ourselves in the wonderful feeling of painting nature. Take a look as they each try to bring the Savannah to our studio!  Coming from the Caribbean, where we experience the wet and dry seasons, we are all familiar with the gorgeous parade of colours that burst onto the landscape every year between the months of January and May (the dry season). This year my Picassos are looking at perspective and in particular the vanishing point, but to make it beautiful and to give them a local context we imagined a street lined with these richly coloured trees in full bloom! I used the pic up top to show them the vanishing point and so they could get a real example of how things appear smaller the further back they go. Unfortunately I couldn't find real a poui-lined street :/ Of course they took a while to get the concept of drawing at an angle and decreasing in size but the end result... well see for yourself!  The Warhols are starting off the term with a little history... Art history and local Trini history. They learnt about Impressionism today. Claude Monet was the first painter in the Impressionist movement. The word IMPRESSIONISM comes from one of Monet’s first paintings called Impression: Sunrise. Because sunlight is always shifting, Monet decided to paint the same scenes over and over to show how the color changes as the light moved. He was pretty determined, too. He painted over 30 paintings of a cathedral on France. Each painting shows how the light effects not only the cathedral’s color but also how light affects the details in the architecture. He set up a series of easels and used different paint colors to paint the cathedral at dawn, mid-day and a sunset. Art critics labelled the painting, impressionism, in order to mock it but the term stuck. It now means painting with light. Monet and other Impressionist had many things in common: they all painted outdoors, used photography to influence their art, wrote about their ideas and used color in a new and different way. Unfortunately we aren't able to paint outdoors, but we can mimic the characteristic elements of Impressionist work by focusing on the use of light as well as the quick gestural brushstrokes of Impressionist painters. As for our local history... well! Chacachacare which is an island off the coast of Trinidad (actually it's only 7 miles from Venezuela but it is T&T territory.) is only about 900 acres of hilly and thickly forested terrain. All that's left of the few structures now are the remains of the house pictured above. During the course of it's history it has served as a cotton plantation, a whaling station and a hospital for a small leper colony. There was once a small convent and cemetery close by that is now almost completely overrun. This is the subject of our piece. The children will draw and paint this fascinating place in the Impressionist style.  Divali is in the air and while the Hindu community is immersed in prayer and fasting, the rest of us can't wait to take in the colour, food and fashion that culminate on Divali day! My Picassos are creating an abstract-styled Indian dancer but my Warhols tackled one that's a bit more realistic. They got the chance to really focus on painting a figure in motion, while also getting to work in all those fun elements like colour and using brushstrokes to show movement! Just love this piece! A couple of my girls opted to paint a lady all decked out in a gorgeous sari so not a dancer but still very very beautiful! Divali is in the air and while the Hindu community is immersed in prayer and fasting, the rest of us can't wait to take in the colour, food and fashion that culminate on Divali day! When I first came across these Indian Dancers by local artist Danielle Rahael I was immediately drawn to them! I love her use of colour and her the fact that she stays true to her abstract style while also infusing our Trinidadian culture! Thanks Danielle for giving my Picassos such a fine example of how a local artist can interpret our life, our colours and our vibrancy into a style that is not always easy to digest. Check out my 7 to 11 year old Picassos as they try their hands at recreating an Indian Dancer in the style of Rahael in celebration of Divali! Our focus here was on colour. They took turns using the colour wheel to figure out their split complimentary colour scheme starting with the colour of their backgrounds. Then they drew and painted in Rahael’s signature style! For Republic Day this year my Doodlebugs are creating a piece that we're calling Every Creed and Race. It shows our multi-ethnic nation working together under one flag! This was so fun to create and packed with skills like using shapes to create a whole picture as well as hand-eye coordination in following the directed line drawing aspect. Not to mention we put the ART in Smart yet again by focusing on our Social Studies tie in! I’m proud to report that most of my littles could identify the phrase “every creed and race” as a line from our anthem... needless to say it also prompted them to burst into song! 😆🇹🇹 Thursday DoodlebugsSaturday DoodlebugsCezanne is called the Father of Cubism and the Warhols got to really focus on what that means in creating this piece. They looked at how Cezanne famously reduced the subjects of his paintings into geometrical shapes like cubes, cylinders and cones. The were also asked to observe his brushstrokes and mimic his choppy style. Cezanne of course never painted coconuts because they were not native to his home country, France. His works are full of apples, oranges and other fruit. But local artist Che Lovelace created a piece in Cezanne's style and I thought it would be nice to show them both side by side and have them try their hands at this master's style but with our own local flair! They focused on drawing this week, next they will add colour and texture to complete their Cézanne/Lovelace inspired coconuts.  So I wouldn't normally make Republic Day about the specific president. In the past I've focused on our national symbols but I figured this President is special! She's our first female president so I think a portrait is in order! This term we're also focusing on the work of French artist Paul Cezanne so my Picassos and Warhols are going to be applying Cezanne's style in this piece. Two of his pieces are shown below. They used a limited colour palette (in our case we chose red, white and black... I'm sure you can guess why) just like Cezanne and focused on making tints and shades and studying how light affects the appearance of colour. WarholsHomework for Warhols:
Tuesday PicassosSaturday Picassos The Muslim community has spent Ramadan fasting and praying and this week my little artists and I took a look at the beauty of Islamic architecture. The symmetry and gorgeous domed rooftops, not to mention the crisp white walls and simple colours! They drew and painted mosques that are set against an evening sky that is just bursting with gorgeous colours... partly because this is when Muslims are called to prayer, but also because I couldn't hold them back from painting the mosque in Carnival colours if I didn't tell them they could use some bright colours somewhere! Eid Mubarak to the Muslim community! |
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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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