And Abraham Went Out . . .

Charlotte Mason and Picture Study

"We aim at putting the children in touch with the great artist minds of all ages. We try to unlock for their delectation the wonderful garden of Art, in which grow most lovely flowers, most wholesome fruits. We want to open their eyes and minds to appreciate the masterpieces of pictorial art, to lead them from mere fondness for a pretty picture which pleases the senses up to honest love and discriminating admiration for what is truly beautiful - a love and admiration which are the response of heart and intellect to the appeal addressed to them through the senses by all great works of art." PNEU

(PNEU: Parents National Education Union. Established by Charlotte Mason)

(One of these days I'll write a little introduction to Charlotte Mason for ya'll, so you can know why I appreciate her work so much.)


"Picture study" for Charlotte Mason might be called "Art appreciation" for some today. It looks something like this:

• Select one artist that you'd like to study for 12 weeks. Choose prints to study once a week.

• Introduce the artist and read a short story about the artist.

• Sit down with the children and the art print. Have the children look at the picture closely taking in every detail of the piece, getting it in their mind's eye (we usually do this for 1 or 2 minutes).

• Turn the picture over and have the children tell you what they saw. This is called "narration" in Charlotte Mason terms. Narration is a key tool in her methodology.  

• After narrating, invite a brief discussion of the piece. Perhaps ask questions like "Do you like this picture?" "What does it remind you of?"  

• The next week, do it again with another picture. 

Inspired by Charlotte Mason's philosophies, my goals for picture study are: (in order of importance to me)

1. to train our eyes for beauty (mine included, I'm a student too)
2. train our minds for detail
3. exposure to the works of the great masters, so much so that we will start to recognize/distinguish each artist's works from another
4. form some sort of intimate knowledge of the artist, so that when we hear the name Raphael or Renoir or Cezanne, we will not only think of his works but of the master himself
5. exposure to elements of art, so much so that perhaps we will think/begin to use these elements ourselves once day

This month we began learning about Raphael. We got this giant book with a selection of his works from the library. We love to find fictional and non-fictional picture books based on the life of the artist but the selections for Raphael have been slim. We do have this one on reserve at the library. These books are fine, they do an interesting introductions to famous composers and artists, so we should learn at least a bit about Raphael. 

Here is a picture we studied this week. It's called Madonna dell Granduca. The picture in our book is black and white for some reason. I was a little disappointed with this at first but it worked out well with our studies for the day and you'll see why.

Here is Raphael's original sketch for the piece. I thought it interesting how he changed the position of the Madonna's face. 

Anyhow I found these neat sites (thanks to Pinterest again!!), where you can find a selection of coloring sheets of famous works of art. We printed off coloring pages of the Madonna dell Granduca for the boys. We pretended that Raphael had finished his sketch but this time he wanted the boys to choose the coloring for his masterpiece. They got to be involved with Raphael's work!

Sage

Interesting point about Mr. Basil. Just between you and me. :) Basil finds learning easy. He is a very good reader, math comes easily, he writes well, etc. When it comes to art, however, the sparks fly. He gets frustrated very easily. (sounds like a certain mama I know) Anyhow, we usually work it out some how and he walks away with something he can be proud to show to dad. I do need to keep thinking on this one though; I always want this to be enjoyable to him. Definitely an area for me to chew on before the frustration continues. 

Anyhow, neat story. Frustration turned to private learning time with mom. Yet another reason I love home education!! Basil was having a nice time coloring but then he started on the face of the Madonna. He couldn't figure out how to color her face. Basil got all frustrated and crumpled up his paper. He vehemently refused to do anymore!

I let him off the hook. A couple hours later, however, we printed off another coloring page. Basil and I gathered all the pencils and crayons that looked anything like skin colors. We tested all the colors on a sheet of paper. Then we found the colored image of the Madonna del Granduca online. We looked at the picture closely. We examined the coloring in the face. The sides were shadowy, the middle bright, and the eyes shadowed with browns. We experimented with this ourselves and success! Peace and happiness was again restored with art and Mr. Basil. I'm sure the friction will come again but with much patience, love, and care I think even Basil can enjoy producing his own artwork of sorts. God help me!

Madonna dell Granduca
by Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino

Here are a few sites where you can print off coloring pages of famous works of art.

http://www.color-me-online.com/masterpiece/paintings/paintmadonna.html

http://www.supercoloring.com/pages/category/artsculture/famous-paintings/

http://www.momes.net/coloriages/1198.html