Inspired Art

We have been looking at various artists from children's books this past few weeks. This week we enjoyed some time with Eric Carl, Leo Leoni and Lois Ehlert. While they are different, they are pretty similar. It was great to pull out books and really take a look and compare the styles, uses of materials and design.

To finish up we read The Tiny Seed (which also ties into some planting we have recently done) and the kids both created flowers. Hudson's was modified as he isn't cutting in round form yet, so he created a rather square flower but a flower none the less. Their art is colorful, full of texture, creative and perfect to have up this time of year! Holly even created a another small project where she made a hummingbird. So pretty!!

Artist Study: Alberto Giacometti

Holly learned about another artist from the Usborne Art Treasury book, Alberto Giacometti. We read about him in the book and looked up some more information through Wikipedia Alberto Giacometti Wikipedia Link and more at TheArtStory.org Modern Art at The Art Story: Alberto Giacometti. Once we did some reading, preview of his art and discussion she then set to work on a child friendly version of his art.

Holly created a foil figure. Using pipe cleaners she designed a long figure of a body, weighted the feet with clay and then wrapped her body in foil. Once completed she then posed the foil figure to her liking. This was a very simple, clean art lesson - one she really enjoyed and was happy with. I can see more foil figures in our future!

Art Club ~ Pointillism

On Friday we hosted Art Club and did a small session on Pointillism. I introduced the artist to make pointillism popular, Georges Seurat, and we learned about what Pointillism is. How 'ism' is a movement... meaning his art style became a movement others followed. We looked a small slide show on his life and art style, looked at some photos of his work and then set to work on our own art work.

The kids were to design a fish or sea scene and complete the work in pointillism, or very small dots of paint. Considering our class was a large mixed age group we have all skill levels - older kiddos did free hand art without drawing their work, younger children drew their scene first and filled it in. Some kiddos were completed very quickly while others spent nearly the entire session completing their work. Seeing the diversity among our artists was really neat, some beautiful work was done!

Holly chose to do a sea scene, in which she did a fantastic job on! While her painting was very simple in appearance the steady work she did by painting it JUST in small dots (with an ear swab and toothpick mind you) is amazing! She spent the whole session working on her project, very determined to complete it. I am very proud of her thoughtfulness in her work and commitment to doing it as she invisioned.

Holly's sea scene -- done in all dots, from a q-tip and a toothpick.

All of the kiddo's finished art work! Great Stuff!