A Brush With Colours

Recently we went to The Wallace Collection to take part in a Rubens-inspired, All Things Light and Beautiful: Colour and Painting Workshop.

The workshop started with a gallery session where the guide introduced the children to two of Rubens' paintings while discussing the artist's use of primary and secondary colours to depict light and darkness in the paintings.

The children were then asked to make a sketch of the Rubens paintings for ideas that they might want to use back in the art studio to create their own landscape paintings based on the principles they have learnt in the morning, of:

• primary and secondary colours;
• complementary colours; and
• warm and cool colours.

The afternoon session of the workshop started with the a discussion of how artists in the 17th century would have had to find ways to create the colours they wanted either by grinding up natural materials such as earth and beetles, or through mixing primary colours to create secondary colours.

The children then had a chance to apply what they have learnt to create their very own Rubens-inspired, colourful landscape masterpiece.

We came home and learnt a little bit more about Peter Paul Rubens by ourselves by looking at a few prints.

I then looked around and found that the Royal Academy of Arts is currently holding an exhibition  that showcases Rubens' works alongside those of other famous artists (such as van Dyck, Cezanne, Turner) whose works and styles were influenced by him.

So off we went to see the Rubens and His Legacy exhibition.

After going round the exhibition, we took part in a workshop where we first looked at how Rubens positioned his subjects in The Lion Hunt, then we were to use pastels to quickly sketch the positions in two minutes.  The exercise was to give us a taste of the thoughts that an artist would have gone into in the compositional phase.

Following that, we were given copies of contemporary photographs as well as Rubens' paintings to make our own collage.  We were given time to position the photographs on a black sheet of paper before using pastels to enhance our composition.  Once we were happy with our collages, we were to use charcoal to draw our compositions out.

Here are our results.  Tiger drew his composition based on his collage.

I was happy enough with my collage to stop there and then.

**Update on June 27th, 2016:
I was contacted by Artsy, a website that collates artists' bio, high quality pictures of of the artists' works, exclusive articles, and up-to-date exhibition listings around the world.  As this is a Rubens blog post, I am linking to the Rubens page where you can learn more about the artist. The page even includes related artist & category tags, plus suggested contemporary artists.  Well worth a visit!


This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 3/10/15
2. Finishing Strong - Homeschooling the Middle & High School Years Week 46
3. The Virtual Refrigerator
4. Collage Friday: Faces of American History
5. Weekly Wrap-Up: The one with the learner's permit!
6. My Week in Review #28

Sketchbooks and quick drawings

We're back in business!

Since drawing and sketching are fundamental parts of visual art, we went to the Wallace Collection for a drawing workshop.

The workshop started with a brief introduction to the different themes to be covered that day:

1. sketching
2. details (tone, light, shadow, shade)
3. portraits
4. proportions

After being introduced to various drawing materials such as charcoal, conte crayons, pencils, and felt tip pens, the children were encouraged to try out different ways of mark making -- first making different marks with a single material, then comparing the marks made by different materials.

After this was a gallery session when we were shown how to note tonal differences using various sculptures in one of the galleries.

We spent a fair bit of time in the Armour gallery where the children were briefed about the history of some of the armoury collection there

 Part of the exercise at the gallery was to take artistic notes in sketchbooks, which involved:

• making quick sketches of 5 minutes each
• taking notes about colour, textures, and tones

While Tiger was doing his exercises, I thought I would give it a try as well.  I enjoy making art but have not been doing it as much as I would like so this was a great opportunity for me to get a little bit of practice in.  At the same time, participating alongside Tiger in his assignments often gives me a good insight into the potential difficulties that Tiger might encounter in the process.  Hence, I took out the biro and notebook that I always carry in my bag and did two of the rapid-sketching exercises (5 minutes each) alongside the children.  By doing the exercises, I had a taste of the pressure of quick sketches and as a result developed a deeper understanding of the multitude of skills (such as a keen observation, some experience with using different marks to create textures on paper, understanding tonal values) that Tiger would need in order to produce sketches to a reasonably satisfactory level -- skills that he has not been exposed to and thus not expected to have at this point.

The rest of the workshop focused on the art of portraiture, using Rembrandt's portrait of his son, Titus, as our focal point.  The workshop leader went through the basics of portraiture such as the proportions of a human face, while highlighting how Rembrandt achieved three-dimensionality through his masterful use of colours and tones.

At this point, the children were encouraged to copy the master's work using a variety of materials: charcoal, pastels, or pencils.

I decided to try doing it using pastels.  It wasn't easy.

Attending this workshop has given me much insight into where Tiger is at in terms of his level of interest and observational skills.  I think he is not doing too badly considering that he has never been taught nor has he ever asked to be shown how to draw.  A broad exposure to various media and art forms via Art Lab for Kids will probably be sufficient for now.

Tomorrow I will be posting about how we use the book for our in-house art summer school, starting with drawing.


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}

Traveling with Marco Polo: Venice

History and Geography
We start our journey with Marco Polo at the beginning -- his hometown, 13th Century Venice.  The lesson plan on the website involves a fair bit of interactive, online resources that Tiger enjoyed working on, especially the map-maker, tracing Marco Polo's route, and making the brochure.  After that, Tiger jumped on Google Map to have a virtual tour of Venice.

We also watched the first six-and-a-half minutes of the following clip to get a better understanding of Venice during Marco Polo's time:

Music
Most days, we have the following music playing in the background from lunch time onwards.

Art and Craft
The Wallace Collection has two rooms dedicated to Venetian art where we had a good look at the paintings depicting Venetian life and street scenes of the 15th-18th centuries.

Venice was a busy trading centre when Marco Polo was growing up so he would have seen many of the activities by the port where he lived.  We also learned that jewellery beads that were made in Venice at that time was a popular trade item.

I have a friend who is an expert polymer clay jewellery maker so Tiger and I spent an afternoon learning the trade from her.  Tiger made a ring, several pendants, a few beads, and a pencil cover.

Food and Cooking
I suspect the 13th Century Venetians ate very different food from what we know as popular Italian food, but I am happy to serve up what I know to support our 'travel' in Venice: pasta dishes and pizza.

Tiger also made his own pizza, from reading the instructions on a recipe book, measuring the amount of ingredients he needed, to mixing, kneeding, and putting the toppings on:

Books
Just to have a broader sense of the country beyond Venice, Tiger read the following books:

This post is linked up to:
1) Look What We Did!
2) Culture Swapper - April
3) Virtual Refrigerator
4) History and Geography Meme #68
5) Homeschool Mother's Journal: April 5, 2013
6) Hobbies and Handicrafts - April 5
7) Collage Friday - Surprises on Spring Break
8) Homeschool Review
9) Weekly Wrap-Up: The Really Busy One Before Spring Break
10) Kids in the Kitchen - Clam Chowder
11) Hip Homeschool Hop - 4/9/13