Art - Artistic Pursuits

Art has always been a welcome relief here. Nature Journals and drawing made school a lot better for my girl and for me. I've enjoyed learning to draw - art in school was fun and that's about all.  When we started homeschooling I had to get my head around art being not just fun but also having things to learn. Scary.

We started out with how to teach art to young people by Evan Moore. Lots of fun projects looking at each of the elements of art. That was fun while it lasted although for many of those sessions there was more theory than fun.

About that time we also added in Drawing iwth Children. I learn heaps. We even had some fun, But for 5 and 7 yr old's it was just too complicated. We really didn't have the fine motor skills to do anything like this.

Then someone suggested Artistic Pursuits. We worked through the books sometimes slowly, sometimes seriously. Generally steadily. I've enjoyed the mix of art appreciation. ( It makes up for my Charlotte Mason failings) serious technique and fun.

Stopping ans starting isn't so good. We've worked through all of the K-34 materials they are fun, and can be enjoyed at a much higher level than the suggested K-3 we've all learnt from these.

The composition and drawing books are great. There is enough of a balance to develop even my youngest who decided early on that he wasn't any good at art becasue he couldn't draw like his siblings. I'm hping so we make it inot the colour books... but this is what we have acheived.

Drawing Animals - the Naturalist age 10

An artist in the family

When we went up for our ballet exam the teacher pointed out a picture of ballet shoes on a music background that she had thought about buying for the studio. Looking at its simple construction I figured that Beth would be able to put that together... mostly it was simple, the main drawing part was a pair of ballet shoes and on the original there were simple line drawings on fabric.

My artist was a little less confident. The canvas was big and well it was for someone else. It had to be good. We did a trial run and made the project even more complicated. It it needed to be a painting not a sketch. She's good at sketching, adding paint is another matter.

Two weeks ago she finished it, and on Thursday she handed it over...

Toolbox - Art and Form

Day 1
Topic intro: Discuss the different ways artists show form and shape.
Warm up: Take a white piece of paper and create a three dimensional
shape with form, form them into a mobile over the week using ideas from
everyone. You can use scissors and sellotape only.
Exercise: To start our investigation of shape and form, and to work on an understanding of why we do art, select five objects within a category ie rocks, leaves, shells, seed pods, insects and draw them showing their differences in shape and size.
Day 2
Warm up: As per day one:
Topic intro: Discuss the brown Pelican by John James Audubon. How does he show form in the picture.
Exercise: Draw a picture of an item the way the sun shines on it. (Show light and dark and discuss at the end of the exercise.)
Day 3
Warm up: As per day one:

Topic intro: Talk about how the way we use line can also show form. If our lines reflect the curves of the object that will also you show form.
Exercise: Choose another simple object and show form using both shading and line.
Day 4
Warm up: Create another shape for the mobile and then put it together using string and a coat hanger.
We might want to work on this one during the morning and put out extra bread, or head down to the lake and draw their. The exercise for this lesson is to draw a picture of a bird showing form and shape . Encourage the kids to use either black and white for this exercise.

Toolbox Studies: Value in Art

Josh - this is a hugh improvement on his art Josh has always opted for stick figures so its been fun seeing him grow in this.

• Monday:
  Artist: Durer : Praying Hands
  
  Discuss value, prepare a value scale help us understand the concept. Apply the idea by looking at a scene using value as a means of providing contrast and communicating the nature of the object being drawn.
  
  
  "Greek Ship" - by Josh
  
  
  
• Tuesday:
  Artist: Durer : The Knight, Death and the Devil
  Look at the pictures we drew in the previous lesson. Did we manage to use value in our drawing. Find a picture to copy and using our value scale try to reproduce the drawing in pencil, using value to portray the various changes in color.
  
  
  "The Woodbasket" by Beth
  
  
  
• Wednesday:
  Artist: Durer : Self Portrait
  Looking at value between colors in relation to other colors. Discuss. Draw a picture to give to someone special. Choose a subject that they are fond of. Remember to continue to work on value as you draw.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Thursday Artist: Durer : The Hare. for the end of this art lesson choose one of the pictures that we have studied and imitate it. See if you can spot any of the elements of art that we have previously discussed.
  
  
  "Paint Brush" by Beth Taken off the cover of Dutch Colour.
  

Art: Space and Line

In many ways this is a catch up unit Josh. So far his art has missed the instruction that the older two have had. For a long time I hoped that he would naturally start to see shape in his drawings, but he hasn't.

• Day 1 Space - horizontal and vertical space.
  
  How can you tell which way you want the paper to go. How do you choose the shape of your picture.
  
  Warm up: Because I want to work on shape and line as well I'm going to use some of the warm ups from Donna Young's website.
  
  We'll look at the two examples given in Artistic pursuits gr 4-6 lesson 1 as a start and discuss. Select two objects to draw and using a pencil quickly sketch them so that they make the best use of your two pieces of paper.

• Day 2 Line & Shape
  
  Warm up: As per yesterday.
  
  Look at how all objects are made up from connecting lines and shapes. When the lines join up we have a shape. In teaching I'll jump of the Artistic Pursuits book unit 2. Then I'll get them to look for lines and shapes in an outside scene - probably the Cherry tree outside the living room windows and draw it.
  

• Day 3 Line and Shape Continued.
  
  Warm up as per yesterday.
  
  Review what we did the previous day. Look at thier drawings and discuss as a group where they made good use of shape and line. Then still looking at line and shape in Artistic Pursuits talk about how the direction of the lines give a sense of form as well as shape. Talk also about times where we can see through what we are drawing to more lines, or shapes beyond it. I.e. the trees beyond our Cherry tree, or wheels on a cannon.
  We have a small grey pumpkin sitting on the bench that I'm going to use for drawing practice. It gives a good sense of where an object has lines that we have to draw as curves to give it its true shape. For the older kids I'll add in a couple of other items for a small still life.
  
  
• No Day 4 - We've had Queens birthday weekend so Monday was a holiday.