Fine Arts updated

I have been busy planning our Fine Arts for 2012.

May I share how I go about this?

Famous Composers

• list all my classic CDs I already have at home (be faithful with what I have)
• check Ambleside Online’s composer schedule  (free)
• find music appreciation unit studies free online – try Harmony Arts Mom  (free)
• register with Naxos.com for online listening and hyperlink the composer studies  (small monthly cost saves me having to buy CDs)
• match the suggested AO composers and my CDs and online music, youTube urls, other music studies and put 12 composers on my year plan  (takes about a day)
• Last year we only covered  6 of our 12 planned composers, but we really loved those we listened to.  I simply start this new year where we left off from last year.

I have updated my Famous Musician Pages to include ~

• Frederic Chopin
• Johannes Brahms
• and new biography pages with a map

Famous Artists

by Georgia O'Keeffe

I have created my own studies and Famous Artist Lapbook, but I was blessed to download Erica’s free The World’s Great Artists Unit Studies. Vol 1. at Confessions of a Homeschooler.com.

She created detailed lessons based on the book World’s Greatest Artist Series by Mike Venezia.

I don’t have these books, but there is so many rich resources on the internet that I will link to the lessons.

I updated my Famous Artists page with wall chart and biography pages to include ~

• Georgia O’Keeffe
• Henry Matisse

Blessings,

Another Vuillard Art Appreciation Lesson

Our Impressionist artist for this month is

Edouard Vuillard

Vuillard’s Mending a Stocking by Miss.K12

Vuillard’s Mending a Stocking by Nadene

Same outline ~ different processes, different outcomes.

Art is so subjective.

We even see colours differently!

Thank you Charlotte Mason for such a lovely simple approach.

Here’s your 3 free outline drawings and small prints of the Vuillard paintings we used in our appreciation lessons:

Appreciating Vuillard

Blessings,

Appreciating Vuillard’s Patterns

Impressionist painter Edouard Vuillard‘s art

often featured interiors, was typically highly decorative,  and full of patterns.

When I planned this art activity, I focused on

patterns

In fact when we viewed Feeding Annette, we counted over 12 patterns in the painting!

I selected Misia Nathanson & Paul Vallotton for our first art appreciation lesson.

When I wanted to trace this picture, I had run out of tracing paper.  Living on a remote farm, I did as most farmers do – ‘n Boer maak ‘n plan – A farmer makes a plan!

I used a plastic page protector and a permanent marker and traced the picture on that!  Then I photocopied the page protector and had my outline ready.  At first I was a little worried about the thick outlines, but it served very well once we started our lesson.

We studied the patterns on Vuillard’s work; on the wall paper and on the clothes.

I gave each child a blank page, folded into thirds.  We each filled the thirds with a different pattern.  We only needed 2 patterns.

Any style, any colours.

We were just using the idea or concept and not re-creating his painting.

Making patterns is a relaxing right-brain activity.

No stress.

Just creative flow.

Repetition.

Then we cut the patterned paper to glue on the outlined drawing.

I held my outline up against the window and traced the outline’s shape over the pattern.  Those thick dark outlines I worried about earlier showed through the patterned paper nice and clearly.

(A light box would work better, but this worked well!)

We cut and pasted the patterns as the lady’s cloak and the wall paper.

We painted and coloured the rest of the painting.

Our final works:

Here’s your 3 free outlines and small prints of the Vuillard paintings in our appreciation lessons:

Appreciating Vuillard

Blessings,

A Collage of “The Cradle”

Image via Wikipedia

I saved Berthe Morisot’s best for last …

The Cradle

It is said to be her most famous art work.

This is a tender painting of Berthe’s own sister Edma gently contemplating her new baby, painted in 1872.

We had looked at it before during this month and talked about Berthe’s transparent painting of the lace and veils that flow over the cradle.

I felt that this painting was simple enough for a collage.

Once again, I traced an outline of the print from our book, and enlarged it to fill a page.

I dumped out all our bags of scrap materials and lace on our floor and table, as well as some felt off-cuts and balls of wool, and asked the girls to make a collage.

I told them it did not have to be realistic or even represent the painting.  They were free to interpret the collage as they felt was best.

We all made several “mistakes” (I prefer to call them “creative discoveries“) as we went along and we all felt that it would have been better if we had known which areas to collage first.

My youngest child became frustrated trying to trace the outlines on thicker material at times, but we were all engrossed in the activity and felt happy with the results.

So here’s  how to do Berthe’s The Cradle in collage.

1. Cover all the background areas first; the walls and even the window.  We colored in areas and /or used thin fabric scraps.
2. We learnt how best to draw the outlines – Start on an edge and align the fabric.  Trace the nearest lines, lifting and looking under it as you go along to see where the line leads.  Cut that line out and place the fabric down carefully and continue along the area, lifting and drawing the lines until the piece is cut to fit.
3. It is best to use white seamstress chalk or soft white pencil to outline dark material and use an ordinary lead pencil to trace lines on light-colored fabric.
4. Do the curtains next.  We used 2 and even 3 layers of netting.
5. I added a split pin/ brad for the curtain tie-back.  I actually draped my curtain around this.  My youngest child  used buttons for her tie-back.
6. We did the mother’s face and neck and the hand that cups her chin next.  I had to remove her hand that rests on the cradle to place the blankets under the hand, so leave her hand until you have done the cradle.
7. Next we added her dress and lace at the cuffs and neckline.  We found it looked best to cut out the sleeves separately.
8. Now we added her hair.  We wound wool around 2 fingers and then spread these loops to form her hairstyle.
9. Next, we covered the cradle inside and the behind veil and fabric that flows over the edge.  We glued the material so that it ruffled and wrinkled.  We used strong clear adhesive glue.
10. Now for the baby in the cradle.  We first made the cushion.
11. Then made baby clothes.
12. We added the top cover or blanket.
13. Now we glued the baby’s hand and then the head.  We added fine details such as the eyes and mouth with brown felt-tipped pens.
14. Some added hair.  I used felt-tipped pen to draw hair on mine.
15. Again I used a split pin/ brad for the brass cradle stand.  We used gold cord for the stand.
16. We draped several layers of netting over the baby in the cradle.
17. Lastly we added the mother’s face details.

This project took quite long, about 2 hours, but it was thoroughly engrossing and enjoyable.

I really encourage you to find a way to enjoy your art appreciation lessons and allow your children to engage personally with the masterpiece.  It does NOT mean that you have to do art lessons.

In making this collage we enjoyed a creative process that placed the details of the painting clearly in our hearts and minds.

Blessings,

More Marvelous Berthe Morisot Art Appreciation

This week we continued our appreciation of Berthe Morisot and studied

 

Woman Sewing In Her Garden

We had already looked at some of her works in our art book and I had prepared some outline tracings for our lessons.

Here’s your free pdf download: Berthe Morisot Woman Sewing Outline

It was a toss-up between “The Butterfly Catchers”  and “Woman Sewing in her Garden”  the first lesson.  I let the kids chose.  “Butterfly Catchers” won the toss!  So this week we looked forward to really getting into this painting.

The lovely young lady sewing in her garden looked so serene.  Like “The Butterfly Catchers”,  Ms. Morisot’s colour palette was mostly grey and green.  Her paint style seemed very loose and “messy”.  She used a lot of white paint over her underlying colours.

With this in mind, I thought we should use white acrylic paint over our completed water painted pictures.  

But I get ahead of myself.  Let me start at the beginning:

• First we looked at the work carefully.  I asked the kids to identify details, features, shapes and basic colours in the painting.

• Then we colour washed the entire background in green.  A colour wash is watery paint spread thinly over the page with a flat, wide bristled brush.  Now we no longer have a “scary” blank white page!

• With different shades of dark, medium and light greens, some mixed with a tiny bit of black, other greens mixed with white, we dabbed the leaves and plants.  We tried to leave gaps white where we wanted the roses.

• Then we painted the woman.  She wore a pale pink dress with grey greens on her sleeve.  We painted the shadows on her face, painted her hair and details of her face.  Then we painted her sewing and basket.  Lastly we painted the bench.

• Once most of the colours dried, we added details like roses, folds of her dress and sewing and highlighted in pure white acrylic paint.  This gave the feel of oil painting and when dabbed on a fairly loose, free way,  it gave the painting its Berthe Morisot feel!

And here are our paintings:

Surprisingly, my 11-year-old’s discussion with me after she completed her work was,

“Please, Mom, don’t put up this painting on our gallery.” (We hang our art on a large cupboard in the kitchen.)

“Why?”  I asked, “Don’t you like it?”

“No.  It isn’t really pretty.”

“Well, that’s fine, darling.  We’ll let it dry and just put it in your note file.”

After the paintings dried, I wanted to punch the holes and looked at the work again and really liked them!  I told Miss. K this and she also reviewed the work and agreed that they were “fine”.

“So does that mean you are happy to put it up in our gallery?” I asked.

“Sure.”

“And on the blog?”  (I always ask my children if I may share their work before I write a post.)

“Yes.  It’s fine.”

What happened? 

Well, the actual painting process was not too hard, but it was not Miss. K’s style.  It left her feeling uncomfortable.  Too messy.  Not enough details and control. 

She needed time to distance herself from the process and the final product.  After a few hours, it didn’t seem as bad as she felt. 

Art is emotional.  Subjective.  Personal.

Often art is difficult.  Often there are challenges and difficulties.  One has to work through new techniques, different mediums, uncomfortable topics or themes … Immature hands can’t always manage the tools of art.  Students in class often want to give up when they can’t “get it right”.  My own children have cried in art lessons.  Sigh. 

But art appreciation is not about the outcome of art work.  One does not have to do any art. 

I try to keep our art appreciation lessons light.  No pressure to perform.

The emphasis of art appreciation is on each person’s internal working and identification with the master’s art. 

May you and your family enjoy your art appreciation lessons.

Blessings,

Tracing Outlines of Famous Art Works

I have often made outline drawings of our art work for art appreciation lessons.  (The Van Gogh picture  “Starry Night”  is one of my most popular downloads!)

Creating an outline is a simple, really easy and frugal method to create an outlined picture which is instantly ready for your child to colour, apply art techniques, experiment with different art mediums, or to make your own version of the art masterpiece.

How to make an outline of a masterpiece tutorial:

1. You need a tracing pad/ tracing paper (available fairly cheap at stationary or at large department stores) and a photocopiers or printer and prints of art works (postcards, calendars, books, prints).
2. Select the picture you want to trace.  Size doesn’t really matter.  You can enlarge any small picture on your printer.  If the picture is larger than your tracing paper, just section off the picture and trace each section separately.
3. Trace the main lines and shapes and outlines with a black pen or fineliner.  (Pencil prints out too faint) You can include major shadows or sketch or paint lines that feature strongly in the painting.)
   
4. Draw a frame around the picture and write the artist’s name and the title of the work at the bottom. (I always try give reference and honor to the original artist.)
5. Place your tracing paper on the printer face down.
6. Print a copy.  Viola!
7. Of course, you can enlarge your small tracing to fit the page.  Just experiment with about 120% or more and see if it needs to be made bigger/smaller.
8. Make several copies for each child or family member.
   
9. Have fun on your paper copy!

Why do we use tracings?

• Create a reference to a famous work and add it to written biographies and narrations.
  
• Apply techniques famous artists use
• Learn to mix colours, do colour washes and paint in layers with details last
  
• Make the art work “your own”
• Focus on the original for clues and details
• Use the original for some more contemporary art techniques (like a collage/ a mural/ coasters/place mats/ quilt designs/ build a 3D landscape, etc.)
• Although many adults consider this just “colouring in”,  I encourage them to give it a try!  It is MUCH more difficult than it seems! 🙂

Hope this helps you create fun and easy art appreciation lessons for your family!

Pop over to my Art Page for all my other art appreciation lessons, free downloads and Charlotte Mason Fine Arts ideas.

Update:  I found an easy tutorial at quotidianmoments.blogspot where Willa shares how to make coloring  pages tutorial using Picnik

Blessings, Nadene

Impressed with Berthe Morisot’s “The Butterfly Catchers”

Our Famous Impressionist Artists we started this month is ~

Berthe Morisot

My girls were delighted to study a female artist who became a committed and successful artist.

Bertha married Eugene (Edouard Manet’s brother, another famous Impressionist artist) and they had a daughter.  She regularly exhibited her art in the Impressionist exhibitions.  Her works often portrayed women and children and simple domestic scenes.  Her most famous painting is “The Cradle”.

We were happy to read that she managed to combine a happy family life with her dedicated career.

Charlotte Mason suggested we study 1 artist and their works for a month, and so we will study Berthe Morisot’s  life and art works this month, and focus on one new painting each week.

This week we chose ~

The Butterfly Catchers

I first asked my kids study this picture in our book Impressionist Painters quietly for a few minutes. 

I asked them to look for details;

• what each person was doing,
  
• the most prominent colours and shapes,
  
• objects’ positions on the page, etc.
  

They were to make a mental picture to “hang in their mental art galleries”.  (I did not prompt them before with any technical artistic info.)

I closed the book after about 2 minutes.  They wrote as many details as they could remember on the back of their outline page I had prepared.  I was pleasantly surprised at the differences and interpretations they each shared in their narrations. We actually see things differently!

I especially asked them to conclude their narration and write what the picture made them feel.  I wanted their own, personal impressions.  Lovely sentences came out!

I was happy with just this.

But I had traced the outline of the painting and suggested they could paint their own picture of “The Butterfly Catchers” if they wanted to.  They were very keen!  So we took out our paint trays and brushes and we all painted.

We were all surprised at how hard it was to paint in Berthe’s quick, loose style!  Most the colours in the painting were grey and green.

We all started with green colour washes; light green on the grass, dark green in the tree area and light blue for the sky.

It was much harder to keep the details clear.  We all “lost” it at different times, and we had to focus and concentrate on colours and brush strokes to keep it free, but not sloppy.

Here are our paintings:

Miss. L9's painting

Miss. K11's painting

Nadene's painting

All quite similar, but each identified with different aspects of her original painting.

It was a most enjoyable art appreciation lesson.

Enjoy something similar with your artist of the month!

Blessings,

Alfred Sisley in Perspective

Image via Wikipedia

This month I introduced the children to Alfred Sisley, a famous Impressionist Artist.

We took a tour of his work on YouTube (with the famous French singer Edith Piaf singing in the background) and viewed more paintings in my Impressionist Painters book by Guy Jennings.

Sisley’s works are mostly landscapes and he often returned to the same place in different seasons to repaint these scenes. 

The children compared pictures of similar scenes. They wrote these details in their minibook and wrote Alfred Sisley’s biography on their notebook pages.  We put up our picture of Sisley and a small gallery strip on our wall chart.

Since Sisley’s paintings are so similar, we could quickly find some common elements in his style.     Most his landscapes had excellent perspective.

To show this, I placed a plastic page protector over the painting and used a whiteboard pen to draw the vanishing point, the horizon line and the painting division into thirds.

This was fun!  The children took turns outlining perspective on several paintings.  I think they really got it!

Because we observed and discussed his paintings at length, I felt we didn’t have to paint or “do”  any art, but my children wanted to paint the painting we studied.

I had prepared traced outlines for the children of Louveciennes, Road to Sevres, 1873 and Snow in Louveciennes, 1878 … for just in case … [smile]

Oops ~ I forgot ~ here’s a pdf of the outlines for you to download:

Art Sisley Outlines

I didn’t even sit with them as they painted, and I was pleasantly surprised to see how naturally they both mixed their paints to copy the grey-blues of his sky and copied his brush strokes and colours of the street and trees. Their paintings were just for them.

Sisley by Miss. K11

Sisley by Miss. L9

Once again, I encourage you to choose a quiet day to do your art appreciation with your children. 

You don’t even have to do all of this ~ just study 1 art work each week from one artist for about a month with the aim of noticing and appreciating that artist and his works.

Sonja Schafer of Simply Charlotte Mason demonstrates this in this video and describes how to do picture study here.  I love how she says that when we have looked at the painting in detail, we “hang it on our mental art gallery“!  She also tells the mom to “get out of the way” and let the child make the art work their own and “form their own relationship with the artist and his work”.

Once your children get used to this, you can add a little extra activity like adding a wall chart or biography page, and by and by, you’ll be doing more in-depth art appreciation lessons.

Blessings,

An Easy Signac “Lighthouse of Portrieux” Art Lesson

Just last week I shared about our first Paul Signac appreciation lesson Going Dotty Over Paul Signac.

This week we did a very simple art activity to make Signac’s Lighthouse of Portrieux “ours”:

We read his biography.  Paul apparently owed over 30 boats in his lifetime and is famous for his sea ports and sea-shore paintings!  There are so many stunning paintings, but the Lighthouse is really stark and quite simple in both composition and colours (and it was in my art book).  We used magnifying glasses to see exactly what coloured dots Signac used.

Here’s the steps we took:

1. Download and print out  Signac Outlines
2. We  placed some firm netting on a clipboard under the outline page.  (I taped my netting on the sides of the clipboard.)
   

   Showing the speckled shading from the netting

3. Then we used twisty crayons in primary colours(red, yellow, light and dark blue and black) and coloured the picture.  The netting created a speckled texture and looked dotty!
   

   Colouring in with primary colours

4. We found out that the harder you press the crayons, the better the colours seem to blend.
   

   Colours up close

5. Also, we shifted the outline paper over the  netting so that we were not shading on the exact same spots.
6. We kept comparing colours and adding layers until we were happy.  About 30 minutes and our pictures were done! 🙂
   

   Lighthouse by Miss. L (8)

   

   Lighthouse by Miss. K (11)

   

   Lighthouse by Nadene

   I really encourage you to try an art activity like this – quick, clean, no mess, no fuss and no stress!  And although it is “colouring in”, the limited colours and the texture inspire the child to see how Signac made colours blend in the viewer’s eye!

   Join the Charlotte Mason Carnival on 3 May for all the Art Appreciation submissions.  Click here if you wish to submit your own post to this carnival.

   Blessings,

   

Going Dotty over Paul Signac!

Image via Wikipedia

This month we study Paul Signac,

a Neo-Impressionist, famous for his pointillist technique.

I am so glad we have a computer because we could really zoom in on his paintings!  We examined the precise method he used of putting pure colours next to each other.  He did not mix his paints, but allowed our eyes to blend the coloured dots together.  We especially enjoyed viewing this in the painting Women at the Well at Colour Vision & Art as they have 3 increasing zoom views of this painting.

I read his biography and looked at some of his paintings at Renoir Fine Art Inc.  The children wrote a brief biography on their Famous Impressionist Artists Biography pages and made the little minibook for this artist from the lapbook download.

We chose a clear painting from my coffee table book Impressionist Painters by Guy Jennings.  Both girls loved the picture of Woman Doing Her Hair.  I had traced and enlarged this picture for them.  (I traced the picture of Lighthouse at Potrieux as an alternative.)  I wanted to save time with the drawing and get straight to painting.

Here is your pdf. download: Signac Outlines

We first painted flat areas of basic colours with water colours.

Then we used acrylic paints.

With small dots of the basic colours and the tip of small paintbrushes, we began the time-consuming task of dotting the colours next to each other to create different blends.  We all, at different periods in the process, felt unsure and unhappy with our dots, but we pressed on and completed the work and solved the difficulty.

Although we did not match his original painting as perfectly as we had hoped, we all sincerely congratulated Signac for painting large canvases and themes this way.

Art appreciation does not mean that you have to do the art lessons, but I find that it really helps the child identify more closely with the masterpiece and the artist.

I trust that my children recognise his works and his techniques as they study him during the rest of the month.

It is simple enough to read, look carefully, narrate or discuss great art!  I hope you are encouraged to add art appreciation to your weeks!  Pop over to my Art Ideas Pages for other art appreciation posts.

Join the Charlotte Mason Carnival on 3 May for all the Art Appreciation submissions.  Click here  if you wish to submit your own post to this carnival.

Blessings,