Scream Blow Painting and Drawing

Here's a little art project with did this afternoon. Just in time for Halloween. The kids' enthusiasm for Halloween is unrestrainable. (spell check says this is not a word; I'm making it one). You can't blame them, I suppose, with the focus on running around town asking for candy while dressed up as their favorite characters. I know this is a highly debated holiday. Our family stance on the affair is that we redeem the good parts. We discuss the origins of the holiday and surrounding days: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Then we have fun with it in a wholesome way. We leave out and censor the gory parts and include the fun, beautiful, and wholesomely entertaining. We might include just a tad of the scary because I do think it is important to interact with our culture on a level that is appropriate. I don't like to isolate ourselves as Christians. Hopefully when the kids are older they will be able to find a healthy balance for themselves.

Anyways, here are our "Scream" paintings from today . . . it was a super fun project for all of us!!!

We are pulling most of our weekly art projects this year from the Art Projects for Kids blog. It's been a hit so far this year!

Art Lessons

"Curriculum" success!

I'm so pleased with the simple little art routine we have for this year. I need simple this year and we've hit it spot on. I just to had to share in case it might be just the thing for another family out there.

I'm not an artistic person. I wish I were and for years now I've had it on my mind to find my artistic side, whatever or wherever that might be found. So I do not feel well-equipped to be teaching any artsy stuff to my kiddos. But again, I LOVE home education! That's the beauty of it. You don't have to know everything or have a degree in everything to expose your kids to a well-rounded education. The world is full of fantastic resources. One just has to seek them out and learn right alongside your children.


I'm definitely in the learner's seat right next to my children as we delve into all things art. Last year I bought an older edition to "Drawing with Children" by Mona Brookes. Excellent book with an excellent method. It was good for me to read about drawing and how differently an artist sees the world. It was excellent for us to learn the five basic shapes in the world, start identifying them, and then learning how we can draw the world around us using those five basic shapes. We did many of the exercises she recommends in the book. It worked fine but I did need more hand-holding. I didn't know what to after a while and it got to be a bit too much for me to be planning art lessons when I needed to concentrate on the three R's.

This summer I kept my eyes open for good art-related pins on Pinterest. I have collected lots of good art-related activities to do with the kiddos, especially seasonal ones. I love seasonal art activities.

But I needed something more concrete and regular. Something to build our skills every single week with very minimal planning from me. I stumbled upon it! It's perfect! Exactly what I need.

We found Mr. Rob's art website for kids. artforkidshub.com

Rob sits down with his children to draw, paint, or sculpt something together. He goes through each step slowly and clearly. His children follow along. We watch and follow along as well. We have our own art teacher each week: Mr. Rob!

He has quite a number of videos recorded, we are easily able to find something that interests us each week. So that's our art curriculum this year.

1. We do a weekly picture study. I think I told you last year what that entails. Right now we are studying works by Claude Monet.

2. We'll do seasonal art activities that I find on Pinterest as the mood strikes.

3. We choose one project each week from artforkidshub.com. The four of us students sit down at the kitchen table, choose a video, and listen to what Rob has to say.

It's quite pleasant.

Even Nutmeg is joining in!

Nutmeg wanted to show off mommy's work. 

More Color

It's been gray, drizzly, and cloudy FOREVER. But today we've had some color pop up in our day.

In about 5 minutes, the boys are getting their first introduction to multiplication. Wahoo! Three bananas, three oranges, three kiwis, and three pears. 3plus3plus3plus3 = 12.

Earlier this morning Nutmeg wanted to dig into the art cabinet. So we used an idea I saw on Pinterest once and made some more color fun.  

Drawing in Perspective 


We were going for something like this . . .

Tutorial found here. 

Here's what we came up with.

Other areas of creativity:

Hair art: working on that girly side. Give me some time, Nutmeg, it may come.

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

Keepin' It Real: A Candid Glimpse into Our Lives


Yesterday the four of us sat down at the table to do a bit of art. A happy-go-lucky time, right? One would think. Um, well let's just say we often don't have it all together. We still haves miles to when it comes to listening and following directions, respect for mother, love for brother and sister, and a positive attitude towards "work." Ahem. (Truly, this ISN'T about complaining; it is ALL about keeping it real. I'm here to let you know that if you don't have it together, you are not alone.)



So anyhow, the lesson hit many bumps along the way but we managed to get through and by the end, the boys were actually happy and proud of their work. And I do think, small progress was made in the important skill of following directions. Baby steps.

Anyhow, here are a couple pictures to show the angelic beginning and the more wild ending for the lesson from Nutmeg's vantage point.

Not a bad couple of D's, Nutmeg. She thought of that herself.
No prompting. Atta girl.  

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today's art gallery.

Chazen Museum of Art

We finally made it down to Madison today to see the visiting exhibition, "Offering of Angels," at the Chazen Museum of Art. I had read on the museum website that photography without a flash is permitted in the museum but when we got the exhibition, the sign said "no photography."  So I guess that means ya'll will all have to rush to Madison before November 24th to make a visit with us.

Unfortunately the four of were not at our best today. Yes, this has been one those weeks where I definitely have not been in the running for the "Mom of the Year" award. Daylight savings didn't really work in my favor today either. I kept forgetting what time it was and we ended up wandering around the University of Madison in the cold for 30 minutes. Nice job, mom.

Suffice it all to say, we were so very glad we finally made it down to the Chazen. It's wonderful! Admission is FREE! We are looking forward to bringing Doug back when we are all in a little better mood. Maybe even before November 24th when the "Offering of Angels" moves on. 

In lieu of the pictures I didn't get to take, here's a quote from the Chazen website on the collection we saw today.  Oh and here are a few pictures of a few other things we saw as well.  We just HAD to get up to the 3rd floor to the see the "Ancient" collection. Mr. Basil was enthralled!

" This exhibition of 45 rarely seen paintings and tapestries from the renowned Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy, includes works by Italian Renaissance and Baroque masters such as Sandro Botticelli, Lorenzo Monaco, Jacopo Tintoretto, and Titian. The exhibition highlights the theme of the Eucharist in art from the Creation of Adam and Eve to the Resurrection."

Stopping for a "run around crazy" break to waste some time
before the museum opened.

Roman mosaic





lol! I'm quite the professional photographer, right?



A Saturday Art Lesson

Hey Dad, look what we did today.

 We love you!!