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}

Scream!

We studied the works for Edvard Munch, to tie in with the theme of Halloween, but somehow I did not get round to posting this in time, but here it is now.

As always, we started with the our in-house gallery of postcard-sized art:

As The Scream is probably Munch's most famous piece of work, we concentrated on it by having Tiger narrate the painting to me, followed by a quick read of Munch's biography and looking at this particular painting a little closer using the questions in the book to fill in where Tiger has left out in his own narration.

We learned more about Munch from the following documentary:

We also learnt about the influences behind The Scream, as well as its far reaching effects on modern art:

I gave Tiger a few different options for art projects related to Munch:

1. write and illustrate a scary story
2. draw/paint a scary or intense scene
3. draw/paint a scary or intense self-portrait

Tiger chose to option 1.  Here is his unfinished story....

Title: The Man Who Screamed

Text: Once upon a time, there was a man, he liked walks, but one day he got lost.

Text: But then, he met a witch!!!  But he was turned into a snake.

Our study was tied into a visit to the Tate Modern to see some of Munch's work.

The Scream was not in this exhibition but we were intrigued by the emotive qualities of Munch's work in general.  For the first time, Tiger felt inspired to sketch from a few pieces of work in the exhibition.

I was haunted by a few of the paintings that I saw at the exhibition, to the extent that I had to sketch them quickly onto paper just to get them out of my mind!

This post is linked up to:
1) Enchanted Thursdays Blog Hop #39
2) Homeschool Mother's Journal: November 30, 2012
3) Collage Friday
4) Favourite Resources: November 30, 2012
5) It's a Wrap
6) TGIF Linky Party #56
7) Weekly Wrap-Up

It is also featured in It's a Wrap.