Cycle 2 Week 16- Monet

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This week we continue to study Impressionism.  When we think of Impressionism we think of Claude Monet.  And when we think of Claude Monet we think of water lilies, landscapes, and dabbled paint.  This is exactly what we want our students to think of as well.  Hopefully by the time this project is done, they will have a permanent impression of Monet’s work and will be able to recall the imagery and technique of his style.

Not only will they see his style, but they will know what it feels like to paint as he did… with one exception.  Monet usually painted outdoors.  Though the Discovering Great Artists lesson has students painting what they see outside, this is hard to do during winter.  Here it is cold and snowy, with very little color outside.  To compensate for this, my lesson has students experiment by copying parts of Monet’s work, then replicate a painting. Continue Reading →

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Cycle 2 Week 14- Gainsborough’s Fanciful Landscapes

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Though Thomas Gainsborough’s landscapes might appear simply realistic to us, they have a dream-like, dramatic quality to them.  It is said that he even created them at home using pebbles, twigs, and even broccoli to create mini dioramas.  The images were very much from inside his own head.

For this project, the students will create their own imaginary scene.  Just like Gainsborough’s, it will be realistic yet wondrous.  Waterfalls?  Rainbows?  Babbling brooks with ferns and foliage?  Erupting volcanoes?  The students get to be as creative and unrestrained as they choose. Continue Reading →

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Cycle 2 Week 14- Botanical Drawings

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I love this project.  It combines drawing with science and math.  It teaches students to carefully study what they see.  It allows us to emphasize size and proportion in drawing.  Kids will always love to doodle and draw imaginative ideas, and teaching traditional drawing techniques in no way inhibits this.  In fact, teaching realistic drawing will give them the skills to better draw what’s in their head.

This botanical drawing is based off the work of Carl Linnaeus, famous artist, botanist, physician, and zoologist.  He carefully studied plants and recorded his findings through illustrations.  They are beautiful examples of science and art.   Continue Reading →

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Cycle 2 Week 13- Rembrandt’s Portraits

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Oh, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Portrait drawing can be the most nerve-wracking art assignment.  The features always look a bit wonky, it never looks like the person you are trying to draw, and it can be embarrassing to have to show it off to other kids in class.  Though portrait drawing is a challenge, following a simple mathematical formula can greatly improve the outcome.

In this lesson, students will learn the basic structure of all human faces.  Using this guideline, they will draw the portrait of a parent in class.  The focus is learning the structure, not creating a perfect likeness of the subject.

The famous artist tied in with this lesson is Rembrandt van Rijn.  A famous Dutch painter of the 1600s, he painted landscapes, biblical scenes, portraits and self-portraits.  To begin the lesson, give an introduction to Rembrandt and his work, then dive into drawing your own portrait. Continue Reading →

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Cycle 2 Week 6- Mona Lisa Grid Drawing

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monalisa

I had the chance to visit the Louvre and see the Mona Lisa in person many years ago.  What I thought would be a huge and impressive painting was actually a small and somewhat dull portrait.  What’s all the fuss with the Mona Lisa?  There have been many theories about the woman’s expression, about what her real name is, and even about the portrait being of Da Vinci himself painted as a female.  Though I am not a die-hard fan of the work, it is still an interesting piece of history and a quintessential piece of Renaissance art.  This week we will re-create the Mona Lisa using a grid-drawing technique.  This will tie in our history sentence and expose students to another way to accurately draw what we see.

Below you will find three lesson plans: one for ages 4-6, 7-9, and 10-11.  The lesson plan PDF includes tutor directions, line drawing of the Mona Lisa, and gridded paper. Continue Reading →

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Cycle 2 Week 5- Cities in Perspective

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Cityscapes are a wonderful way to use perspective drawing techniques.  Luckily, the geography for this week is European Cities, a perfect jumping off point for drawing buildings in perspective.

The drawings this week are inspired by vintage travel posters.  They always have a dynamic sense of depth due to…. you guessed it, perspective!  These are the posters that inspired this week’s projects.

travel posters

Perspective can be a challenge.  Students have to use rulers, line up points, and do all sorts of stuff that is hard for them.  Just remember, it is not about what the final drawing looks like.  It is about students learning the ideas.  Even if it doesn’t look great, they are practicing challenging subject matter and gaining understanding.  That’s the important stuff!

Below you’ll find lesson plans for ages 4-6, 7-9, and 10-11. Continue Reading →

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Cycle 2 Week 4- Abstract Native American Salmon

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For week four, the lesson combines Native American art (timeline card “Early Native Americans”) and abstract art.  First, let’s define abstract.  It is a category of art that represents imagery in a simplistic or distorted manner.  Under this category is non-objective art, which takes out the recognizable image completely, and we are left with just lines, color, etc.  The Foundations Guide art idea for week 4 is non-objective, but using abstracted imagery can also effectively teach students to design well using lines, shapes, and color.

Just like the lesson from the Foundations Guide, this lesson encourages students to use the elements to create interesting and pleasing design.  Students must also think about space, balance, and repetition as they draw.  The fish in the project is a simplified shape, and the motifs inside are focused on design, not realism.  Let’s get started on the abstracted Northwest Native American Salmon! Continue Reading →

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Cycle 2 Week 3- Book of Kells

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For week three students will be doing an upside-down drawing.  The concept is about training our brains to see the image solely as a group of lines and shapes.  It also relates back to OiLs and the ability to describe and duplicate lines.

It is so, so, SO important to teach students to look at the object in front of them as they draw, and to study the lines that create that object.  People tend to draw the object they see in their mind rather than what they see in front of them.  For example, if asked to draw an apple on a table, many people would look at the apple once, then keep their head down and draw what they think a typical apple would look like.  We want students to constantly look back at the object and draw the nuances of the lines and curves- simply as a series of lines and curves, not an apple.

The lesson below relates to geography for the week.  The Book of Kells is a medieval illuminated manuscript created by monks in Ireland around 800 AD.  It is a great way to connect art to history to geography. Continue Reading →

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Cycle 2 Week 2- Geometric Bear

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Fine Art for week two is Mirror Images.  The exercises this week are great for training students to pay attention to shapes and angles, while also practicing the skill of manipulating images in their head.  They will need to study the shapes and be able to flip them around in their mind’s eye before they draw them.  This can be tough to do!

As in the last post, this project is tied to the science for the week.  Students will be drawing a picture of a bear.  For the 4th edition guide, this was tied to types of consumers (bears are omnivores, excluding polar bears which are carnivores.  Pandas are technically omnivores, but prefer to eat mostly plants).  Now that we are in the 5th edition, bears can be tied into biomes: from Giant Pandas in the tropical rainforest, Polar Bears in the tundra, and Grizzly Bears in grasslands and forests. (Bringing in a picture book about bears could be fun for younger students.) Continue Reading →

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Cycle 2 Week 1- Rainforest Drawings

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The first week of CC is almost here.  Woo hoo! (Or maybe, “Aagghhhh!”)  Here is a drawing lesson that incorporates some science from week one (plants and animals in God’s creation) along with the OiLs drawing techniques.  Below you will find three separate lessons (one for each age group) but all with the same theme.  The age group is a suggestion, so use the lesson that you feel is best for your class. Continue Reading →

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