First Impressions

As promised, here is a recap of our Impressionism week:

Impressionism was, in part, a reaction to the advent of photography.

 We took that one step further and painted right on the photographs!

 Magazine Impression - Age 5

You can't do the Impressionists without painting some Monet water lilies.

 Well, you can...but why? - Age 8

We painted our Monet project using only the colors he used in his palette: blue, green, purple, white and yellows (he used several). Red was added pater with oil pastel.

Plein air painting. Taking the studio outside!

Several young artists chose the same subject but interpreted them quite differently. These are hibiscus flowers. Left - Age 8  Right - Age 11

 Why, exactly, is Ms. Melanie soaking our canvases in milk?

So we can create vivid pastels ala Degas! - Age 8

 

We studied Mary Cassatt then created our own monoprints of a family schen. Step 1 - Paint the scene onto the plate (in our case, the back of a cookie sheet).

 Step 2 - Press paper onto the wet plate to make a print.

 Step 3 - Lift paper and viola! - Age 11

 What else for our Cezanne study but a bowl of fruit?

 Classic Cezanne perspective trick. Which bowl of fruit looks closer, 

the warm or cool colored one? - Age 11

 Painting a bazillion dots like Seurat can me boring. That's why we did it on a cookie first. Cookies are never boring.

Looking for inspiration for our pointillist paintings.

Lots of dots. Lots and lots and lots.

But the results are amazing! - Age 10 

 Last day of camp. We stormed the Chrysler Museum of Art, sketched in the Impressionism gallery...

...and rocked out with some interactive art! 

Every Picture Tells A Story

I promise to post a full account of this week's First Impressions Art Camp soon, but I had to go ahead and share the story we wrote about this etching by Mary Cassatt:

Mother's Caress

This activity came from a book, Monet and the Impressionists for Kids, which has lots of great info and ideas for introducing young children to Impressionism, I gave my young artists prompts to tell the story behind this painting. This is what they came up with:

This is Mary and Bob. They live in a house in Sicily. They have just finished having a bath and are thinking about putting a bow in baby Bob's hair. Earlier they were reading a book. They love to read books! What you can't see in the picture is a diaper for the baby. They are feeling sad, but we don't know why. Later they will go to the park. Maybe that will cheer them up!

Pretty great, huh? I must say they were quite concerned about the lack of a diaper. They asked to do it again so tomorrow we will try the activity with Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte.