More Impressionism

Last week, which was the "next week" of my previous post, we surveyed a few more Impressionist artists.  (In keeping with my own personal blog rules, I do not apologize for not getting the actual post out last week.)

We took a quick look at work by Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassat, Edgar Degas, Paul Gaugin and Vincent Van Gogh.  I continue to be surprised at how closely many of these artists worked together.  The often shared studio space and models (as Gaugin and Van Gogh, who sometimes had a hard time getting along as roommates in Van Gogh's yellow house), set up easels next to each other to paint the same scenes en plein air, and painted each other's portraits (take a look here, here, here, here, here, here and here).  Hmmmm...can you tell that I am fascinated by the fact that they painted each others' portraits?

We created our own Starry Nights.  Here is my whiteboard sketch to help the children with shapes and placements. 

I have spent all year trying to get the children to use long smooth strokes when drawing and painting.  Now I am trying to get them to use choppy little strokes and no blending.  We used oil pastels on regular paper for this project.

Finishing: I did a quick watercolor wash to darken the pictures a bit. I did the wash for them since we were using regular paper, and the watercolor bleeds through so quickly.

Still to come: Pointellism!

Leapin' Lizards!!!...

...the Sm'Arties are back!...

...and they are drawing and coloring Reptiles!!

Let's warm up by drawing a snake.

Now for something harder:

Can we draw like Mark Kistler?

I think so!

Lunging Lizard!

Get out your black construction paper, your pencils and oil pastels,

...decide what  part of the snake is on top...

...use lots of bright colors...

...and patterns of circles, dots, and lines...

This project inspired by Art Projects for Kids' Aboriginal Snake.

Stencils and Leaves

I was inspired by this project from Artsonia.    I liked how the project was on a skinny piece of paper.  (Note to self:  Later we must use even skinnier paper, landscape direction to make comics.)  The Artsonia students sponge-painted in the stencils with tempura, but after two weeks of sending out ART SHIRT ALERTS, I just wanted to get back to using oil pastels or colored pencils or something.   

Sketch a half-leaf on folded cardstock, and cut it out and unfold to reveal a stencil. The idea of cutting a hole in the paper was hard to grasp, and I did not anticipate what would happen.  Though I showed them exactly what I was doing and how the stencil  looked when complete, several students added a stem that reached to the bottom of the little piece of paper, resulting in a re-do or a tape fix.  No, no, DRAW the stem in later - the stencil needs no stem.

Figure out how the leaves will "fall" down the page.  (We did this project on posterboard.  I recommend using some other paper for this type project.)   Then we colored them in LIGHTLY PLEASE with fall colors.  I found that if you color with the yellow last, and kind of harder over the top of the other colors, it blends all the colors nicely.  If you color hard to begin with using the other colors, then coloring with the yellow pulls the other colors off the page, resulting in frustrated young artists. 

Now go back and outline and vein with black  Add a drop shadow. (I forgot to tell the Sm'Arties to use a drop shadow.  Maybe the moms will see this post and show their Sm'arties)  Accent the leaves with white.  Wow!  Doesn't that look cool?  Earthgirl went back and added the drop shadow under each leaf so I could take before and after pictures.             

Before adding drop shadow

After adding drop shadow

Now add swirls to represent the wind - black, white accents, then a little glitter glue accent, too.  Can you really see the wind?  No, but you see the effects of the wind.  Quote John 3:8.  For extra credit, quote it in King James version: " The wind bloweth where it listeth..." ) I forgot this part, too.  No extra credit for Miss Sm'Artiepants.

The girls found a tree frog on the window screen.

 He wants to be a Sm'Artie, too.

 

School's out!!!!!

 

Kadinsky-inspired

This project brought to you by copycatting real art teacher Kathy over at Art Projects for Kids. Another project using this same artwork as inspiration for the younger set can be found at  Deep Space Sparkle.

 Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was an early abstract artist (he could paint realistically, too).  Kadinsky was one of the artists targeted by the Nazis for his Degenerate Art. Our project for this class was inspired by this Kadinsky painting. I showed the children how a colorful fabric design used as chair upholstery mimicked this painting. 

We used oil pastels on dark construction paper.  Each child chose black or brown construction paper, and I directed them to fold the paper in half lengthwise (hotdog fold), and then in thirds, then flatten out the paper.  Then they simply filled each rectangle with concentric circles of color with oil pastels.  They chose the colors.  Some colored randomly; others chose to make warm or cool color circles.   

Keisuzi even got involved with her own picture.

Each week I want to teach the children something about the art we are doing - artist, history, technique...something.  After our Mondrian-inspired art, Keisuzi and her son were surprised to hear that the question was, "Who was Mondrian?" on an episode of Jeopardy.