Questions about South African Artists download

 A reader ordering my South African Artists download asked ~

“I just wanted to check with you if the artist study would be suitable for children aged 9, 7 and 5 or is it mostly aimed at older children?“

Another reader asked,

“I am new to Charlotte Mason and wondered how to use your South African Artist download?”

Here are my responses~

This  South African Artists download is designed for middle and high school students for Art History & Art Appreciation. This download includes simple biographies, Internet links and at least 4 examples of each artist’s works, as well as a blank biography page. I used it with my children when my youngest was 6 or 7 years old, and her siblings were around 9 and 13 years old. 

The wide variety of art and artists that I included in this download covers notable South African artists from the 19th century to modern contemporary artists. The art ranges from classical oil paintings to modern sculptures, classical to contemporary art, both male and female artists, and includes both European as well as indigenous artists. Many of the artists produced landscapes or portraits, some were sculptors. One South African artist’s traditional Ndebele style was famously used to paint a car and even an aeroplane! 

I believe in exposing children informally, regularly to fine arts each week in our Fabulous Fine Arts Fridays.  Following a Charlotte Mason approach, we studied and appreciated one South African artist for a month, focussing on a new art work each week. The aim is to appreciate the artist’s style, content, method, materials and message in their art.  In the first week, I introduced the artist, read their biography and we viewed one new art work.

I used larger images of the art work on my laptop, zoomed in to fill the screen, to appreciate the art. I encouraged detailed observations, informal discussions regarding the subject of the painting, the style and colours, and any message they personally experienced. Sometimes we looked at other works online, and maybe added further research. Then each child responded with their narrations. Some weeks we included supporting art activities to imitate the art work. Sometimes we copied the art work, or coloured in an outline drawing of the art or made clay or paper mache sculptures.  Most times, we simply looked and then discussed the art work. Don’t worry if you don’t have anything to “show” for your Fine Arts lessons.  It doesn’t have to be recorded or written or filed.  Just talk with your children and listen to their interpretations, encourage their creativity and personal connections.  Look for ways to for them to “make it their own”.

All this to say that perhaps your 5-year old may simply enjoy the exposure, whereas your older two children could gain a deeper art appreciation experience.  May I suggest, because art appreciation is so personal, choose the art that you enjoy and relate to from my South African Artist collection.  You definitely do not need to do them all!  

Scroll to the bottom of this post for your FREE SAMPLER of this download.

Please pop over to my Packages page to order your downloads.

Blessings, Nadene

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Fun Activities For Kids At Home

Here are some creative and fun learning activities links from my blog for your children to enjoy at home as we move into unprecedented changes in our lives with self-isolation and lockdowns due to the global covid-19 outbreak.

May I offer a few practical suggestions with these at-home activities?

• Look for items that your children would enjoy.
• Plan for 1 activity per day.
• Keep things informal.  Don’t try to do school at home!
• Take your time.
• Don’t rush through a list.
• If something sparks joy and delight — stay there and look for other similar activities rather than moving on to the next thing on your list.
• Repeat.  Especially young children love to repeat an enjoyable activity.  Don’t be afraid to print things out and do it again if your child loved it.
• Photograph and video them doing their activities.
• Display their finished work each week on a door or shelf “gallery”.
• Share their activities with grandparents and social groups to stay connected.

So here we go ~

1. Paper dolls and paper men from different historical eras to colour in and cut out.  Use these as puppets for narrations.
2. Narrations are the child “telling back” what he heard in a read-aloud. Narrations are the cornerstone of a Charlotte Mason education.  Children must pay close attention while they listen to the story so that they can make it their own and express what they remember and understood as they narrate.   I have collected over 100 narration ideas for every learning style.  In this Ebook, you will find lists of suggested activities for audio, visual, kinesthetic and creative learners along with templates and printouts.  You can see examples of the templates and ideas in the original post.
3. Letterboxing – a great “treasure hunting” geography game to practice in your house and garden. Letterboxing is an intriguing mix of treasure hunting, art, navigation, and exploring skills.
4. Current Affairs is the study of social, political and important happenings in the world at the present time.  Use this Current Affairs download with calendar pages, maps, flags and symbols to chart the events around the world during the coronavirus crisis.
5. Nature Study and enjoy the great outdoors with fun nature activities in three Smash Nature Journals.  Go to my  Packages page to order your Smash books.  If you order all 3 you get the third book free!
   
6. 3D models such as the Little House in the Woods.
7. Art appreciation activities of famous artworks and famous artists~
   •  Famous Artists lapbook
   • Famous Impressionist Artists lapbook
   • Tracing Outlines of Famous Art Works
   • Van Gogh “Starry Night” ~ Art Appreciation
   • Van Gogh’s Sunflowers
   • 3D Model of Seurat’s “Bathers at Asnieres”
8. Creative projects ~
   • Morse code bracelets
   • Make a rag doll family
   • Make a Polly Pocket in a soap dish
   • Painted heart rocks
   • Corn starch clay ornaments
   • Toy car travel mat
   • Pretty beaded candle jars 
   • Marshmellow paste cake decorations
9. Bible activities ~
   • Colour in a young man in armour
   • A young woman in armour
   • Easter ~ here is an awesome “Easter pictures and hands-on activities“ download using all  5 senses.
   • Parables lapbook with almost every parable in complete NKJ scripture quotes in a variety of colourful square-fold minibooks with blank pages for the child’s own notes.
   • Book of James Lapbook
10. Sight Words are frequently used words that your child should easily recognize in his reading.  In my Sight Words Ebook, you will have all the word lists, words in sentences, games and activity templates.
11. Handwriting practice with laminated charts and games. I have created a 20-page E-book is packed with practical tips and it includes helpful activities and fun pre-writing games to build up your child’s gross motor strength, develop fine motor control and develop their spatial awareness, correct posture and pencil grip for maximum control and minimum stress while learning to write.   
12. Hands-on activities ~ Here is a list of some of the many hands-on activities and posts on my blog ~
    • Make memories with hands-on activities
    • Easter hands-on activities
    • End of year activities
    • How to fit in hands-on activities
    • Hands-on knots
    • Ancient Egypt Lapbook and hands-on activities
    • Vikings hands-on activities
    • Ancient China hands-on activities
    • Hands-on Sonlight
    • Having fun with maps
    • Action!
    • Tailor-made
    • Around the world mobile

I hope that these posts and links and downloads inspire you in your homeschooling!

Wishing you all health, happiness and precious family times.

Blessings, Nadene

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Introducing HelloArtsy

Recently I discovered an artist John and his website, HelloArtsy.

John is a drawing and painting instructor and his website is full of wonderful tutorials, videos, art “how-to’s” and lessons.

I checked out his step-by-step 2-Point Perspective tutorial and his simple guidelines and clear images seemed so “do-able” that he convinced me to try my hand at some 2-point perspective sketches!

The image below looks complicated, right?  But if you sit with pencil and ruler and a scrap of paper and work along with him step-by-step, you will arrive at quite amazing results!

I encourage you to bookmark this website and work through some of John’s art tips and tutorials during your Fine Arts sessions with your children in this new year.

Blessings, Nadene

Christmas Greetings

My dear readers,

Here’s wishing you and your family

a wonder-filled

and Christ-centred Christmas

and a peaceful and restful festive season.

Sharing some of my Doodlewashed December Christmas sketches.

Until 2018, be blessed! Love, Nadene

Introducing Botanical Artist Lara Gastiger

I would love to share an amazing artist and botanical illustrator, Lara Call Gastinger I discovered on Instagram.

She describes herself,

“Botanical artist, illustrator, documenter and interpreter of all things exquisite and awesome in nature.” and “As a trained plant ecologist, my love of learning and drawing nature is exemplified in my field journals. I do these journal entries for myself and also as commissions.”

Her works are finely detailed, beautifully painted and wonderfully intricate.   Her artistic and observation skills allow her to capture all the small details, the tiniest veins and fibres, the uniqueness of each specimen and form amazing complex nature journal pages.

She often creates one large or double-paged spread, forming a detailed and layered journal entry for each month.

Check out her sketchbook on her website http://www.laracallgastinger.com/work.

She has inspired me to draw much finer details and to layer my journal pages with notes and to place a few sketches inside smaller boxes on my page layout.  Her idea of adding several sketches to a monthly double-page layout seems such a good idea, instead of trying to create 4 weekly pages.

We are so blessed to have the technology to discover and share amazing talent!

Blessings, Nadene

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Time for creative mom

In response to my post Sketching Again, a reader recently asked,

“How much time do we as moms need each day to be creative? “

I suppose it depends on your family life and demands on your time, and whether you enjoy creative activities.  Enjoyment is a powerful motivation.

If I can carve just 20 minutes of creative sketch time for myself, I feel so grateful and rewarded. This is not every day, and it is not always possible when life and stressful situations are more important, but it is something I find easy to pick up and do when there is a lull or gap in my days.  Right now, with just one teen to assist in her homeschooling, I have a lot more free time than I had while juggling three young kids all on different cores so I can find time to be creative!

We need to grow and be creative ourselves in order to give continually to others.

For some folk that “creative / me time” may be physical, such as going for a brisk walk or run, doing a quick workout, or taking a nice hot bath with soft music playing. Others need to be alone, maybe to read a book or listen to a podcast.   Some love to garden, sew, knit, quilt, or sketch.

When the children are young, then it is best to sketch or craft with them. Within a few weeks of doing sketches or nature journal prompts, the kids feel more confident and know what to do and can pretty much work without your help, giving you that time to do the activity along with them.

Doing art together with my children. You’ll see my art page at the bottom of the picture.

We enjoyed Fabulous Fine Arts Fridays, a whole day for our Music and Art Appreciation lessons and some poetry or Shakespeare.  Our Fridays were always so relaxing and enjoyable, so different from our normal school schedule, that we all looked forward to this time together.  It was also very informal.  We simply listened to a classical music piece while observing an artist’s work and often did some art ourselves.

Sketch Tuesdays always were a wonderful opportunity to draw and sketch something really simple.  Because we had a whole week to complete the sketch, there never was any pressure.  And despite there being no feedback or critique given, the children learnt so much about their art and skills simply by viewing the slideshow and experimenting with new and different art mediums.  We sometimes copied other famous artist’s style in some of our Sketch Tuesday sketches, discovering the artist’s true talent and ability.  Again, it is fairly simple to pull out some paper and sketch and paint right alongside your children.

Otherwise, simply do something creative and personally rewarding in the afternoons while the family are doing their own thing.  I often find a half hour after lunch before I need to take down washing or start preparing dinner.  Weekends are also a good time to sketch, paint, garden, sew or do some sort of creative hobby.

If you have lots of children, or little babies or busy toddlers, then you may be deep in the trenches, and creative time for yourself might be impossible for this season, but, remember, that this season will pass, and you will be able to have your body and space back!

Blessings to you as you carve out small Mother Culture moments for yourself each week.

In Grace, Nadene

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Recent Sketches

Recently I shared that I had started Sketching Again.  I decided to keep my Mom’s Nature Journal and sketchbook out on my desk as a visual reminder, and I try to spend about 20 minutes daily sketching and painting in time squeezed between folding laundry and preparing dinner.

I am using the Doodlewashed September “Simple Pleasures” prompts and here are my latest sketches ~

I was particularly happy how my first watercolour portrait came out, but I am not including the second portrait I did of my other daughter because it was so completely off that it would be a huge injustice to her if I posted it.  Portraits are really tricky!

I enjoyed creating all the details in “Popping bubble wrap” and felt good about the painting of the hands in “Rock., Paper, Scissors”.  The other paintings felt a bit “meh”, but I enjoyed the process and feel that I am learning as I go along.

It is important to just keep painting, experimenting, changing the approach or the medium.  If you are in a slump, just play.  Do abstracts.  Don’t worry about the end-results.  Just have fun!

For those who are keen to try sketching daily, why not join the rest of the world (really!) with Inktober  31 Days 31 Drawings.

I encourage you, moms, to also make the time to sit and sketch weekly.   Join your children in the weekly Sketch Tuesday topic, or sit and create an entry in your Mom’s nature journal page.  It is wonderful to give yourself time to sit and be creative.

Blessings, Nadene

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Sketching Again

Recently I shared that I had lost my inspiration and that somehow I had lost the joy in my sketching.  Truth be told, I actually hated my own recent art work.  Every attempt seemed so childish, colored-in and flat.  It wasn’t the lack of inspiration, but the lack of style.

I love pinning ideas and finding artists who inspire me on  Pinterest and Instagram posts.  There is an endless stream of amazing sketches and art, but the result of all this influence is not helpful to developing one’s own art.

You need to create your own art to find your own creative style. 

My 17-year-old daughter’s advice to me was to try a new art medium or technique.  This is very helpful, especially if you just play around without an end product in mind. I suppose recovering from lost art inspiration is a bit like horse riding after a fall; you need to get straight back up and ride again.   But in the end, finding art inspiration and personal style is like the Nike slogan ~ “Just do it“.

During a quiet spell this past weekend and this week, I pulled out my sketchbook, downloaded the Doodlewashed September “Simple Pleasures” prompts and began again.

My first attempts were not too bad, but I found that, as I sketched daily, I rediscovered something in my style that I liked, and the joy returned.  I loved the simple pleasure of sketching and painting.  I loved the quiet, right-brain activity.  And I enjoyed my art again.

While still finding my new artistic joy, I want to encourage you, moms, to also make the time to sit and sketch weekly.  You need times of creativity.  Join your children in the weekly Sketch Tuesday topic, or sit and create a nature journal page (prompts at the bottom of the post) each week.  It is so restorative.

Charlotte Mason called it “Mother Culture“; spending time learning and growing.  Spend regular time reading your own book list, creating art and journaling in nature; all part of your personal growth portfolio.

May I encourage you if you haven’t done any sketching for a while ~  Start again,  Just Do It!

Blessings, Nadene

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Using a grid to draw

In our Art Appreciation lessons we love to copy great art works and images.  An easy way to accurately copy pictures is by using a grid.  Here are some of our Peerneef artworks we painted using a grid ~

Instead of drawing the grid from scratch each time, I created transparent grid lines on MSWord in several sizes which you can lay over any image.  Here’s your free download ~ Transparent grid

To create your own grid over a picture  do the following ~

1. Download and save the Transparent Grid to your computer.
2. Open a new Word document.
3. Insert the image you want to use for your art work.  You need to click”Wrap Text” on the top menu and select “In Front of Text” so that you can freely move and position your image.
4. Open the Transparent Grid doc and select and copy the grid size best suited for your image. (Use the very small blocks for very detailed pictures, or the large grid blocks for larger shaped images)
5. Paste the grid over your image and position as needed.
6. Save.
7. You can work directly from your computer screen onto your own art paper or print out your image with the grid.

Here’s an important CHEAT ~ You can create a pencil sketch of your image using the free photo editing package “Picasa“.

Open the image in Picasa, select the blue icon “Even more fun and useful image processing” button, click the “Pencil Sketch” option, and “Save as”.  Now insert this outline image in your grid for even easier copying!

Prepare your own art page and create a grid to match your printout, in the same ratio of blocks across in rows and down the side, but these blocks can be larger than your printout if you want to enlarge your image.  In other words, if your grid image has 4 blocks across and 5 blocks down, then your art page should also have 4 across and 5 down.  If the printout grid lines are 2 x 2 cm, you can create your art page grid lines 4 x 4 cm (or larger) so that your new image is larger and fills your art page.

Now you are ready to sketch the image on your grid printout or on your computer screen.

• Work block by block, copying the lines, angles and shapes in that block.
• Use where the shapes intersect the grid lines as your measure.
• Work with the large shapes first and then add the details.
• Once you have your outline, gently erase the grid lines and you are ready to paint!

But there is an easier way! Art Tutor has an excellent Grid Tool that does this all for you ~ http://www.griddrawingtool.com/   Simply follow the step-by-step tutor and download and save your grid image to your computer.

So now you can recreate any image or picture on your page using the grid lines as guides to make your own art!  Enjoy!

Blessings, Nadene

3 things to avoid in art lessons

What Works! 

Art is about creativity and inspiration, but many moms avoid teaching art in their homeschool because it is often seen as messy and unpredictable.

Here’s what to avoid in your art lessons — with helpful practical hints to do instead ~

Too focussed on the end product

Inexperienced moms and insecure children often look for a “cookie-cutter” approach to successful art lessons.  Typically these art lessons give step-by-step instructions which always result in similar outcomes.  This often kills creativity.

Always look for an opportunity to teach important art concepts, techniques, or history, and find ways to tie as much learning and personal choice as you can into every project you do with your students.  It is important for the art teacher to know what to do and how to do it, but it is more important to allow the child to discover and create and enjoy the artistic process without feeling afraid that it “won’t come out right”.

Too Formal

A gentle, informal approach to fine arts is really effective!  After years of teaching art, I found that most real creativity is often spontaneous and requires a sense of freedom.  Avoid tedious technical lessons, or using mediums that require great skill and ability or processes that frighten and exasperate children.  Rather let the child practice with a new medium or process on scrap paper and then apply this to another process.  This encourages exploration and discovery and will increase the child’s artistic skills.

Too Time-consuming

Plan art lessons in manageable  time frames.  Young children need shorter lessons, while older children can work for longer periods.  It is always difficult to pack away art and try restart the process another time.   Homeschoolers can devote a whole day to fine arts and complete rather complex art activities, if they want.

Plan and schedule art and do it with your children!  It is a wonderful way to build relationships and grow in creativity together.

What have you found works in your art lessons?

Blessings, Nadene