Time with the Great Artists

>(in picture above--left- Delaney's Gainsborough painting, middle standing-Cailin's Monet with dabbles and dots of color. laying down in middle--Delaney's Monet. right standing--Connor's Degas, a bird in flight. laying down--Cailin and Delaney's Degas)


For six weeks, during CC, the kids studied various artists from the classical and impressionism era. Not only did they learn a little bit about each artist, but they also tried to imitate a certain characteristic they used in creating their masterpieces.

Their studies began with Rembrandt. He was know for having one side of his subject face shaded in shadow and for strong facial emotion. He was a famous portrait painter. Photography was not available, so the only way to have a picture of your self was to have it painted. Few people in history are know by their first name, Rembrandt

Harmensz van Rijn was one of them. The kids tried to draw a person with a lamp placing light on one side of the face, creating shadows on the other side.

Then came Linnaeus, he loved nature and drew flowers. What makes him special is that he drew each part separately along with one complete flower. He was also a scientist, and is known as the 'Father of Taxonomy', his system of naming, ranking and classifying organisms is still used today.

Thomas Gainsborough was a famous English painter of landscapes and portraits. He was the most sought after painter of his time for painting portraits. He liked to paint fancy landscapes, ones that were more ideal or imaginary than real. The kids had fun creating a background scene on paper. Then, on another piece of paper, they drew themselves, cut it out and glued it onto the background painting.

Here the classes create stencils, trace around them, then slightly move them--trace again--move--trace, to help them show movement in their object.

Edgar Degas, is the artist the kids are studying in these pictures. He was from Paris, France. He was also known to be a draftsman, sculptor, and graphic artist. He studied law but preferred painting portraits. Although he didn't consider himself to be an Impressionist, he was grouped with them during exhibitions. Traditionally Impressionist painted outdoors with bright and light colors. He preferred to paint indoors. His artwork is famous for showing movement. He loved to paint dancers at ballet, races and romantic night life of Paris.

Over the top of the crayon drawing they added a color wash of paint

They also studied Claude Monet, he's a French artist who is best known as the leader of the Impressionists, a group of painters who painted as they saw or felt, rather than what was really there. He liked to paint with short brush strokes, dabbles, and splashes of pretty color. He also liked to catch light and reflection in his work. He loved to paint simple thing, especially reflections in water on plants and trees.

Morisot is one of the few women painter of the Impressionist time period. She used bold wide strokes and like to add texture--salt, eggshells--and such in her paint. The kids had fun painting with cornmeal, salt, iron shavings and egg shells in their paintings too.