Our Look at Paul Cezanne

A still life of our Cezanne Study

We have had a wonderful time looking at paintings by Paul Cezanne. I introduced this fun artist to the boys via the book above called Cezanne and the Apple Boy by Laurence Anholt. It is lovely story about two Pauls, one small and one big. Small Paul has a summer off so he leaves his mother (Hortense Fiquet in the cards above) in the city to go live with his father, big Paul, in the country. The two Pauls have a wonderful summer together. We learn that later small Paul when he grows up becomes an art dealer and sells his father's paintings.

Paul Cezanne Montessori Cards

We have used Montessori cards with each of the artist we have studied and still we are not tired of playing the games that teach us the names of the paintings. The boys favorite game is concentration. They can not keep the pair unless they can say the name of the painting with no help and no hints. They do very well for after the third time playing, we played about ten times, they had the names down pretty well, even the hard French words. They play having fun and never really think that I am getting them to learn something.

Max's Painting of  Saint Victoire

I gave them a choice to paint any of the 12 paintings above, so they picked two  favorite ones and we did something with it. Max's choice was this painting. All three did a splendid job on it! They painted on canvas board which I purchased from Dick Blick art supplies for very cheap. I bought the classroom pack and saved a bundle. I think the boys enjoyed having 'real' canvas to paint on, and the finished project is sturdy and pleasing.
We began by drawing with a pencil a light sketch of the main elements in the painting; the tree, the mountain in the background, and some of the obvious bushes and trees. You may notice we left out alot of details to suit their ability. But the painting still works. Then I gave them yellow and blue to make the greens they needed. Then yellow, red and blue to make brown, and finally blue and white to make the sky. Whaaaala a bunch of paint makes a landscape.

The Card Players...everyone's favorite

This painting they all loved. but instead of painting in onto canvas board which would have been too difficult for them, I tried something I had seen over at Art Projects for Kids.

To begin:

• I photocopied a coloring page of this painting.
• Then I taped a piece of velum over it.
• The boys colored the picture with my sharpie permanent markers (they got better colors that way and the ink didn't run in the next step)
• Once they were done coloring the picture they cut off the extra edge of the paper, and we decoupaged it onto the canvas board. I used a mixture of 1:1 glue and water to do this. I fisrt painted the back and laid it onto the cavas board and then painted over the top try desperatly to get those wrinkled out. But they just would not go.
• Then we let them dry.

In the end the colors faded a little and the wrinkling was terrible. But it makes a cool finished project any way. It was fun to look at so many still life paintings and landscape paintings, something we haven't had much exposure to, and see that even that can be interesting to three little  boys. I didn't speak at all about the cubism which is what made Cezanne revolutionary to the boys, because the boys would not have cared. They liked the natural concrete things in the paintings, and the rich earthy colors. After all, our aim is appreciate art and save it in our minds for rainy days when we need to remember beauty still is with us.

We also filled out an Artist bio sheet same as the ones we used before using Dover art stickers to embellish the page at the bottom.

I also used Van Gogh and friends to add to our knowledge of the paintings and about Paul Cezanne himself.

Now we will step back from appreciating art and learn to make some as we work on our art skills. We are focusing on drawing skills this year with Barry Stebbing's art curriculum entitled I Can Do All Things.

Gauguin Artist Study

"I am leaving to be at peace, to rid myself of the influence of civilization. I only want to create art that is simple, very simple. To do that I need to renew myself in unsoiled nature." -Gauguin

We began learning about Paul Gauguin last year. We chose to do this mini mural below using pre-mixed paints to get the imaginary colors he was famous for.

I wanted to begin with one of his paintings from Tahitii because it is there that he felt he had found the ideal unspoiled life he was looking for. I found it interesting that thougth he abandoned his wife and children in search of his dream of living amongst the uncivilized and paint, he kept pictures of all of his children lined up in order of their ages on his mantle where ever he found himself. We learned from the section in Van Gogh and Friends about him that he often wrote them letters.

To learn more about his indiviual paintings I made 12 Montessori cards with the name of each work typed on the bottom of the card. I printed two copies of each card and we played concentration and go fish with them. Once they had the feel for the names I required them to be able to say the name correctly before securing the cards to their own pile.

To learn more about a few paintings,

we colored Still Life with Three Puppies,

Tahitian Landscape,

and  The Vision After the Sermon.

We learned more about Gauguin when we read The Yellow House. Seeing him with Van Gogh really shed some light on his personality. And becasue we had already learned alot about Van Gogh it was fun to do this notebooking page about their differences and similarities. We also filled out an artist bio sheet and added our favorite dover art stickers to the bottom.

Self Portrait

So, though Gauguin was not a saint, he has lovely colors and ways of doing art that enriched us and inspired us to use our colors with more imagination and boldness. And though we began our study of his art last year and finished it up again this year we hadn't fprgotten what we knew about him and have gained alot from knowing more about this fascinating painter.

Claude Monet

Impression sunrise By Claude Monet

Monet painted this misty sunrise from a hotel window that looked out upon the harbor of Le Harve, one of the busiest seaports in France. In the dim moring light, you can see smoke stacks and the masts of a sailing ship refelcted in the water. The impressionists got their name from a critic who disliked their work. In 1874, Louis Leroy attended the first independent art exhibition in Monet, Renoir, Degas, Morisot, Pissarro and others exhibited their paintings. In his nasty review of Monet's Impression Sunrise, he wrote, "Wall paper in its embryonic state is more finished than this landscape." He went on to all them all 'Impressionists." Even though the critic meant to insult them, the artists liked the term and began to use it themselves. Monet said, "I am, and always will be, an impressionist."  -Excerpt from The Impressionist Art Book by Wenda O'Reilly

Since we did a little look at how to paint before we learned about Monet it seemed fitting that we should try out our painting skills on some fo his simple paintings. The haystacks were done with a coloring page printed onto cardstock and then we mixed out paint and went to work.

This is TJ's up close. Just like the impressionists his painting looks better at a distance. (smile)

We also painted water lilies.

We also painted water lilies with a watercolors and crayon resist. Art Projects for kids has a great lesson plan to follow.

We filled out an artist bio sheet and added stickers of Monet's art work.

Finally we colored some of his paintings from coloring sheets while looking at the 'real thing' on my laptop.

"The Walk" by Max

"The luncheon" by TJ

"Boardwalk at Trouville" by Zak

TJ at work.

We  read three books during this study:

Katie and the Impressionists by James Mayhew

Linnea in Monet's Garden by Christina Bjork

The Impressionist Art Book by Wenda O'Rielly

I made these montessori cards to learn 12 of Monet's wonderful works. We played go fish and concentration with them mostly.

"Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love." -Claude Monet

A look at Edgar Degas

"Jockeys" by Edgar Degas

We are looking at the Impressionists this year, Edgar Degas is our first artist to study from this period. I have always enjoyed his sketchy work and his rich colors....what was new for me to discover is that he did quite a few paintings of the horse races as well as dancers and cabaras. My boys liked these pictures of the horses and jockeys the best of all his work...not surprising they were not too intersted in dancers. Max did however like many of the paintings of circus performers.

I found this artist bio notebooking page at homeschooling with index cards in her FREE notebooking forms section. It is a great way to begin documenting our discoveries of a new artist. The small works of art are Dover art stickers. Just the right size to fit in the box...that is except for the paintings which are in landscape view. The black and white picture of Degas I found on the internet and printed, cut out, and glued to the sheet.

We learned about Edward Degas via these picture books:

Degas and The Little Dancer by Laurence Anholt

Edgar Degas Paintings that Dance (a smart about art book) by Maryann Cocoa-Leffler 

The Impressionist Art Book by Wenda O'Reilly

the Art Book is accompanied by a go fish card game introducing the impressionist artists. Since there are four prints for each artist you can play game like rummy, or concentration as well. The Art book and the cards are sold together under the name of The Impressionists Art Game. We played the go fish game alot!

There were four pictures in The Impressionists Art Book that we used for picture study. The book told us about how the paintings were painted and more about why Degas painted in certain ways. It was short and easy for a 5 year old and a 7 year old to understand and attend to, without getting boring. But at the same time it gave us good insights into the works of art Degas produced and how he went about producing them.

With some of our pictures from old calendars and art museum pamplets we put the pictures we were doing a picture study into this picture study form.

We also colored a few pictures from The Impressionist Coloring book. This is T.J's rendition of "Jockey's in the Rain."

Some helpful websites for further discovery:

Hey Kids meet Edgar Degas

Degas and the Dance for Kids

Art Smart for Kids

Harmony of Fine Art 2010 Autmn Art and music appreciation plans

Edgar Degas paintings to view

Edgar Degas Momtessori Cards