Our Journey Westward » Artist Study

Paul Gauguin Resources

Cindy — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:14:18 +0000

Gauguin was an interesting character! I can’t claim that he’s my favorite artist, but we still enjoyed our time spent with him this month.

Self-Portraits

Below are the resources that have been in the sidebar. We won’t be doing artist or composer study in December. I’ll have resources in the sidebar again in January!

Paul Gauguin

Olga’s Gallery

Cattle Drinking

Landscape

Black Pigs

Piti Teina

Lesson Ideas

Pet Still Life

Self-Portrait

Various Worksheets and a Bio

Books We’ll Read

Rousseau Resources

Cindy — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:20:06 +0000

We have LOVED our time spent with Rousseau, but now it’s time to move on to French sculptor, Auguste Rodin.

Henri Rousseau

Olga’s Gallery

Landscape with Cattle

View of Bridge Sevres

The Football Players

Monkeys in a Jungle

Lesson Ideas

Princeton Online – Several Ideas

KinderArt – Fantasy Jungle

Lesson Plan Page – Stained Glass

Books We Read

Don’t forget to sign up for the giveaway that takes place bright and early Thursday, October 1st!

Rousseau’s Jungle Paintings

Cindy — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 18:17:38 +0000

I am loving Henri Rousseau’s style. It’s somewhat of a folk style with lots of bright colors. Combine that with whimsical scenes and it makes me smile. So many of the artists we’ve studied have been too serious for me, but the lighter side of Rousseau has revived my artist’s eye!

Rousseau spent many days studying, sketching and painting exotic plants while visiting huge greenhouses that housed plants and trees from all over the world. These plants inspired him to paint jungle scenes. In most of his jungle scenes, you’ll find animals or people hiding in the midst of the plants. Rousseau would get his inspiration and models for many of those additions as he looked at photographs from magazines. To look at his paintings, you’d think he spent a lot of time in jungles, but not so!

Surprise

Fight Between a Tiger and a Lion

Two Monkeys in a Jungle

The Waterfall

Here are Mahayla and Caleb’s attempts at a Rousseau jungle painting…

We actually tried to pick leaves that looked jungle-like and roll over them with painted brayers to make prints, but it didn’t work very well. Instead, the kiddos just decided to paint with brushes.

Paul Cezanne

Cindy — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:57:33 +0000

Here are the resources that have been in my sidebar for our August artist study. Henri Rousseau is in the sidebar for September
Paul Cezanne

Olga’s Gallery

The Mount Sainte-Victoire

Still-life with Apples

House and Trees

Boy in a Red Waistcoat

Lesson Ideas

Cezanne Still-life

Another Still-life Idea

Math Lesson for Older Students

Cubism Lesson

Books We’ll Read

Ending our Month Spent with Wildflowers

Cindy — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 13:38:48 +0000

I admit that wildflowers are quite possibly my favorite of all nature studies. I’m always in awe of God’s creativeness, beauty and majesty through such delicate little things like wildflowers. I’m also amazed at how each season presents me with new flowers that I’ve never noticed before – each with awesome characteristics that are different from any other flower.

A field of wildflowers can move me, while a single wildflower observed closely makes me marvel at the constant, yet diverse design that makes a flower a flower. And to think that wildflowers are “planted by God” reminds me that He cares about me enough to bring me flowers!

I have posted at Shining Dawn Books about this week’s identification walk. I hope you’ll take a minute to hop over there and read An Abundance of Wildflowers as it’s somewhat of a continuation of this post.

Last week, we took a very up-close and personal look at wildflowers through comparisons and dissection. There was no long nature walk involved – only long enough to collect several flower samples to bring back inside. Since the yard wasn’t off limits for picking, the kiddos brought in a couple of flowers that aren’t considered wild. No matter, it made for a great opportunity to discuss the difference between the two!

The first activity was to compare two completely different flowers for similarities and differences. This is another of the notebooking pages that comes with the Wonderful Wildflowers NaturExplorers unit.

The second activity was flower dissection to identify all the parts of a flower.

We own a very old dissection kit that made the dissection not only easy, but exciting for the kids.

We were able to see the ovules (eggs) in the ovary on this hollyhock (not a wildflower).

Eli always gets in on the action!

The third activity was drawing the cross-section of a flower and labeling all the parts.

And the final activity was to complete a watercolor still-life of wildflowers. We have been studying Cezanne, who painted several still-life works, so this tied art and nature study together quite well. And to get composer study in the mix, we listened to a CD of Chopin (our composer of the month.)

“Wildflowers in the Rain”

Artist Study – Paul Cezanne

Cindy — Mon, 11 May 2009 13:40:40 +0000

Well, I shamefully admit that you may see Cezanne in the sidebar again next school year. We finished up school around the middle of April and when we were done, we were DONE! Artist and composer study didn’t happen. The way I look at it – I’m one step ahead of the game as the new school year approaches! LOL

Here are the sidebar references for Cezanne for your sake and mine!
Paul Cezanne

Olga’s Gallery

The Mount Sainte-Victoire

Still-life with Apples

House and Trees

Boy in a Red Waistcoat

Lesson Ideas

Cezanne Still-life

Another Still-life Idea

Math Lesson for Older Students

Cubism Lesson

Books We’ll Read

Cincinnati Art Museum Field Trip

Cindy — Mon, 04 May 2009 13:36:48 +0000

Our homeschool group visited the Cincinnati Art Museum last week. What a wonderful trip!! We knew we’d see art and hoped we find art by a famous artist or two, but had no idea how many famous artist’s works they have. I’ve included a BUNCH of pictures, but this only scratches the surface of treasures we found! And even better – the trip was FREE!

(Sorry for the slant to the pictures. The only way to take a decent picture without an awful glare was to take it from the side. And these pictures don’t do the artwork one bit of justice!)

Really from Egypt!

Matteo di Giovanni

Grant Wood

Charles Russell

Theodore Rousseau

Van Gogh – My Favorite!!

Claude Monet

Mary Cassatt – My Second Favorite!

Pierre Auguste Renior

Paul Cezanne

Pablo Picasso

Marc Chagall

Andy Warhol

Joan Miro

I’m ready to go back and take more time to really observe the art – without a two year old would help! Fair warning – if you decide to go, realize there are nudes and it’s hard to avoid them.

Van Gogh Resources

Cindy — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 20:43:38 +0000

We just finished up our study of Van Gogh. As usual, I’m adding the resources from my sidebar into a post for future reference. April is our last artist study for the school year. (Yep, we’re almost finished with school – and looking forward to a nice, long summer break!!) We’ll be studying Cezanne. Those resources will be in the sidebar soon.

Vincent Van Gogh

Lesson Ideas

Sunflowers

Starry Night

Sunflowers

Starry Night

Apricot Trees in Blossom

Almond Tree in Blossom

Blossoming Almond Tree

I chose the three paintings above for the purpose of learning to draw trees this spring as they begin to blossom.

Books We Read

Here’s the last art/nature project of the Van Gogh month. After doing picture studies of the spring trees above, we went outside to find trees and bushes in bloom and the kiddos completed their own spring artwork.

Van Gogh’s Sunflowers

Cindy — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:57:16 +0000

After reading Camille and the Sunflowers, I had the kids try their hand at recreating Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” using an idea from Art Projects For Children. They turned out GREAT!!

The directions in a nutshell:

Use a pencil to draw a vase, table line and the flowers.

Go over all or most pencil lines with a black marker.

Use oil pastels to finish the masterpiece!

Renoir

Cindy — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:31:06 +0000

This is the week for cleaning up my side bar! Here are the references that have been in the sidebar for February’s artist, Pierre August Renoir. Next month, we’re studying Van Gogh, you can find those references in the sidebar now.

A Girl With a Watering Can

La Grenouillere

Luncheon of the Boating Party

Picking Flowers

Websites To Visit

Biography for Kids

Renoir Gallery *Warning: Preview these as Renoir painted many nudes!

Books To Read

We have LOVED Renoir! In this week’s lesson, the children chose Renoir’s painting below (Oarsmen at Chatou) to try to replicate.

Mahayla’s

Caleb’s