3D Model of Seurat’s “Bathers at Asnieres”

We really enjoyed Seurat’s first masterpiece “Bathers at Asnieres”.

Bathers at Asnieres

Following Charlotte Mason’s approach to art appreciation the girls quietly studied a print of this work and then orally narrated what they remembered in the picture.  I read a short biography and they wrote their biography on our Famous Impressionist Biography notebooking pages.

In our last Seurat study, we found real life photos depicting his “Sunday Afternoon on the Ile de la Grande Jatte” and because his composition in “Bathers” is so formal and still, we decided to make a 3D model of this painting.

We only used what we had.  We looked at the size of objects, proportion and the layout. (A quick revision lesson about the laws of perspective!)

Setting up the river, the bank, bridge and backdrop

With a little prestick, some cardboard, Lego pieces,

Lego boats and people for in the distance

a few home-made rag dolls (that the girls play with instead of Barbie’s), some pins and a lot of fiddling

Rag doll model being positioned

and this was our result!

Our 3D model of Bathers at Asnieres

It took a lot longer than we expected.  It also required much less space because it all has to fit in the camera frame.  We were all really pleased with our ‘real life’ Seurat-inspired masterpiece.

Happy with the results!

I also prepared 6 pages of outline drawings of this painting which you are welcome to download ~ Outline Bathers at Asnieres

Outline drawing of "Bathers"

Here’s some ideas of what I may do …

• Perhaps we’ll use it to paint and use ear buds to dab paint in pointillism style …
• Maybe we’ll colour it in and cut it up and create our own puzzle (page 2) …

Puzzle - colour the picture and cut on dotted lines

• Or we could divide it into quarters and enlarge each to make a large mural (page 3,4,5,6) …

1st quarter

2nd quarter

3rd quarter

4th quarter

• Perhaps we could create a collage and paste coloured paper and material on the shapes …

What other ideas do you have?