Art Summer School: Painting

The second part of the art summer school has to do with painting. We did Lab 11: Painting in the Style of... from Art Lab for Kids.  The example given in the book was that of Georgia O'Keeffe but we decided that we wanted to do Picasso, mainly because we had been to see two exhibitions recently.  The first was of his prints, The Vollard Suite, a while ago.

The second, and more relevant to the painting exercise that we will be doing, was the Becoming Picasso exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery.

The year 1901 was pivotal for Picasso as he was emerging from being an art student to cementing his position as a master in the art world.  At this point, his style had not yet evolved into that of a Cubist, which most of us are very familiar with.  It was still quite traditional in a sense but we can certainly see his personal style emerging.

We also read two books about Picasso, although they are probably more relevant for understanding his style in the later years but they are good for a biographical overview of his life.

For our painting exercise, I asked Tiger to choose one of Picasso's paintings of the year 1901, which we had seen at the exhibition at Courtauld Gallery, to briefly talk about and to copy.  He chose to copy the Absinthe Drinker, saying that the colours and the posture of the model intrigued him.

I set the table easel up with a canvas board.  Then I used a blu-tac to hold the postcard-sized copy of the Absinthe Drinker by the side of the canvas board.  Our previous contour drawing exercises came in handy since drawing the outline of the work using a pencil was to be the first step of this painting exercise.

Once the outline was completed, it was time to paint with acrylic paints.  I wanted Tiger to mix his own colours so I told him to use a limited palette:

• cadmium red
• crimson
• cobalt blue
• ultramarine blue
• cerulean blue
• cadmium yellow
• lemon yellow
• titanium white
• mars black

Mixing colours and painting carefully took the most part of the day so we only managed to do one exercise from the painting section of the book.

Next week we will continue with exercises on printmaking, paper, and mixed media.  You can read all about our Art Summer School here.


This post is linked up to:

1. Virtual Refrigerator: Phineas and Ferb
2. Hobbies and Handicrafts - August 9
3. Collage Friday - Braces and First Days of School
4. TGIF Linky Party #89
5. Weekly Wrap-Up: The One Where We Did Stuff
6. The Homeschool Mother's Journal {August 10, 2013}

Mondrian Again

Mondrian-inspired abstract art is, by far, the fastest art project that Tiger has managed to do.  After the previous introductory session, we have been able to do two more projects this week.

The first project's instructions are from Discovering Great Artists.  It is a variation from last week's project in that we used black electrical tape for the initial grid lines on graph paper.

Once Tiger was happy with his black lines, he filled in the rectangles using a variety of medium: wax crayons, felt tip pens, and brush markers.

It took 20 minutes to complete Project 1, so we decided to do another quick one.  Tiger remembered a Mondrian spread from his doodle book:

There was one quick introduction to Mondrian in the book, followed by ready-drawn grids with colour-guide written in selected rectangles.  It was the child's version of painting-by-numbers.  Generally Tiger and I don't think painting-by-numbers or colouring books teach anything useful, but on this occasion Tiger was happy to use the brush pens so he did the exercise anyway.

We went to see the Mondrian Nicholson In Parallel exhibition at Somerset House.  It is a small exhibition so we were able to take our time to slowly go round and look closely at each piece of work.  The exhibition is interesting in that it shows the how Nicholson's work was influenced by his friendship with Mondrian, by placing both artists' works side-by-side.

As a final recap, we listened to both talks on the Smarthistory site on Mondrian.  I just discovered this site, and am very pleased with how comprehensive it is in terms of links and presentation.  We will be using it more in the future.

This post is linked up to several blog hops, where you can visit to see what other homeschoolers have been busy with.  It is also linked to the Carnival of Homeschooling Blog Carnival.