ABOUT SURREALISM
Surrealism is a strange or wacky view of life that often resembles dreams. In real life, René Magritte spent his days in Brussels, Belgium painting in his apartment. He dressed like an everyday man, wearing a black suit and bowler hat. Many of Magritte’s paintings feature a bowler hat.

One of Magritte’s most famous paintings, pictured above, shows a man’s face covered by an apple. He enjoyed making these types of strange portraits and used different everyday objects to cover or partially cover the subject’s face in each one.

​We talked about what came to mind when they looked at thr artwork and I got a variety of different and interesting answers, among them...maybe he just doesnt want to show his face, he is hiding, he is saying something about forbidden fruit.

​The children could place any object over thr face of the man and I got to highlight how interesting it is that the time we live in reflects our art and our experience of life.

Picasso is not known for his paintings of animals but a few emerged - The Rooster (Le Coq) in 1938 and Cat Catching a Bird in 1939.
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Many students are familiar with the way Picasso showed both the profile and frontal face views in his portrait paintings and the
same is true for The Rooster (Le Coq). The beak and eyes are drawn in this familiar way. Which, of course, is what makes this rooster project different and a lot more fun than drawing a regular rooster.

Henri Matisse was born in 1869 in a small town in France. His parents owned a general store and wanted Henri to take over the family business but Henri decided to become a lawyer instead. At 20, he got very sick and had to be admitted to the hospital. His mother bought him a box of paints and from that day on, Henri decided to be an artist.

Matisse was called the “King of Color”. He recognized that color played a big part in how we perceive life. Later in life, Matisse developed cancer and was bed ridden. He still created art in his
bed by using a bamboo stick tipped with chalk. He drew on the ceiling!

He also started cutting out shapes with scissors and called this art form, “drawing with scissors.”
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Did you know…
• That Matisse and Picasso were both friends and rivals?
• That Matisse joined a group of painters and because of their
wild colors, they were known as “Fauves” which means
“wild beasts.”
• Matisse painted with a few colors and a few lines at a time.

Van Gogh's Sunflowers is one of his most famous paintings and to capture the characteristic lively brushstrokes the Picassos used a unique technique! They mixed drywall compound into the paint and applied it using a pallet stick.

​They really enjoyed manipulating the paste onto the cardboard andvseeing the effect it created. I have to say I love the texture!

In this lesson, students will learn about one of the few
female Impressionist artists: Mary Cassatt. The way that Cassatt captures light in her painting Summertime is magical. I am jealous of the women on the boat leisurely watching the ducks! Those ducks are the inspiration for this painting that features texture, value and movement.

ABOUT MARY CASSATT
Mary Cassatt was an American artist. She also
lived in France for part of her life. Impressionist artist
Edgar Degas became her friend and influenced her to
take a place in the Impressionist movement. Cassatt
liked painting scenes of family, specifically mothers
with their children.

I can almost feel the mist on my face and hear the crash of waves when I look at the artwork Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. We discussed what they might see, hear, smell, taste and touch when they imagine themselves in the artwork. Then they started to create their own Sea of Fog Mixed Media art with textured rock paper, a sense of space in the depth of their seascape and by drawing a lone figure watching it all.
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ABOUT THE ARTWORK
Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog is considered one of the masterpieces of the Romanticism art movement. The emphasis on nature and emotion make this piece a classic example of Romanticism. The artist who painted it is
Caspar David Friedrich, who was a German artist. His is best known for his dramatic landscapes that typically feature a lone figure.

Medieval Knights were mounted warriors who went to battle and fought for their Lords. Knights came from wealthy families and it was considered a high honor to be a knight. To become a Knight, training began as young as 7-years old. A boy would become a PAGE, a Page would become a SQUIRE and a Squire would become a KNIGHT.

Knights in the 12th and 13th century wore shiny armor when they went to battle. At first they rode with chainmail but this evolved to plates of metal for better protection.

I asked one of my brave kiddos to share a bit of research on just how one can become a knight... so they got to hear from a classmate instead of from me 😁

Take a look as they draw and paint a jousting knight set against a medieval backdrop!

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!