Skip to main content

Our Fall Art Class

You may remember me mentioning something about teaching an art appreciation class for our homeschool group's fall co-op.  Well, I just had to share what my kiddos created in that class.  They had a lot of fun!  

The first week we talked about George Seurat and Pointillism.  

I had the students use heavy art paper, acrylic paints, and cotton swabs 
for this technique.  They were to simply dab the cotton swab in the 
paint and use dots of paint to create their paintings.  The Princess 
went for the landscape, while Mr. B chose fruit as his muse.  



I think I'd like to try this again soon with my kids and practice mixing 
dots of different colors to create another color.  For not being an 
artist, I do find this stuff totally fascinating!

(For instance, did you know that Seurat is basically the father of our 
modern day printing technique?  He thought that any color could be 
created by using red, blue, and yellow.  Have you looked at what 
colors your printing cartridges use lately?).


The second week we talked about Jean Dubuffet and textured sculpture.  

For this project my husband cut a whole bunch of wood blocks for us to 
use for the base of our plaster of Paris.  Then we pressed various
objects into the wet plaster to make impressions.  We used shells, 
buttons, Legos, screen, chain links, coins, you-name-it...  

The class was finished at that point but I encouraged the students to 
paint their "sculpture" after it had dried well.  My kiddos chose to 
paint theirs: The Princess went for a turquoise and Mr. B for red.  


The Third week we discussed Jackson Pollock and splatter painting.

Each student had an 8x10 canvas to paint.  Some really got into the
splatter action (see The Princess' above), but others had a more 
difficult time doing that and went for a different approach--and 
that's okay, too.  It's all about self-expression, right?  Mr. B went
more monochromatic (see below)


Our final week we learned about Alexander Calder 
(my personal fave from this study) and wire art.  

I finally narrowed down a project in Calder's style for our class to wire
fish.  This was a fun project!  I never knew wire could be so expressive.  
Each student received about 18" of wire and was asked to form it into 
a fish.  They could embellish it with beads--or not.  The Princess added
beads, but Mr. B opted for a purest approach.  I love both fish!


And after four weeks of art appreciation we are now enjoying some lovely
new original art in our home!  

I am looking forward to more fun art projects this year!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Making of an Egyptian Death Mask

We are learning all about the ancient world this year with Story of the World I and loving it! We've been learning a lot about Egypt, of course, which is completely fascinating. Most recently we have studied the New Kingdom of Egypt, which includes the story of King Tut. So we decided making an Egyptian death mask in the style of King Tut's would be a fun project. First since it was too cold at the time to paper mache in the garage (it probably would have frozen instead of dried-ha) and it was too messy to do it in the house, we decided to pick up a couple of cheap craft masks at Hobby Lobby. Next we cut out cardboard shapes to complete the shape of the death mask, attaching them with hot glue. Vince even put a little detail on the *beard* with the hot glue per The Princess' request. Then the kiddos started to paint them with this metallic gold tempera paint. It worked okay for the cardboard, but would not coat the plastic of the mask. We thought maybe a second coat

Door Hanger Chore Charts

My kids have had a chore chart for a while.  It's one of those magnetic boards and they share it.  However, it's not by their rooms and often they (and I) forget to update it.  Plus it's a little bulky.   When I saw the concept of a door hanger chore chart on Pinterest, I loved it!  It was compact, right there were the kiddos could see it coming out and going into their rooms, and it costs almost nothing to make.   I headed over to one of my favorite stores: Hobby Lobby, of course.  They  have these little wooden door hangers for .79.  I also grabbed a couple of packets of decorative buttons for $1.99 each.  I already had the clothes pins and the paint so those cost me nothing.   I began by painting the door hangers (I used tempera paints because that's what I had).  Then I grabbed a fine point Sharpie and the clothes pins and started writing chores on them, making sure to write them correctly so they will clip on the right direction.   The left

1st Day Back to {home}School, Among Other Things

We did it! We finally got unpacked enough and got our new learning room organized enough to start back to school! Frankly, I was starting to get worried...ha Today went very well though. So far I am extremely pleased with our new curriculum choices for math and language arts. Now, if I could just actually get some lesson planning done... And get the finishing touches done in the learning room, so I can blog it! In other news, it has been a bit of a traumatic week...pet-wise. Last weekend a sweet friend (who had asked my permission beforehand) brought the kiddos their very own little fish tank with two goldfish. Well, on Sunday we noticed that The Princess' fish was pretty lethargic...dead, actually. She was sad, but she handled it fairly well. And we went to the store that evening and let her pick out a new goldfish. Well, today during our school time~the fish tank is in our learning room~we noticed Mr. B's fish was acting funny. And then he was dead. It was a