art lessons

Art Lessons + Math

~ shelli ~ 4 Comments

If you read Our Summer Homeschooling Plans, you’ll know I wanted to concentrate on math this summer. I also wanted to keep up with art, and I’m happy to say we did this, and we even got to visit some art museums, which I’ll post about later.

Because of my plan to work on math, I was so happy that my go-to art resource had an issue about art and math. If you haven’t checked out Amy Hood’s e-zine, Art Together, I urge you to look at them. They aren’t expensive, but Amy worked hard at filling them with easy ways to include art into your life. Of course, you have to set time aside and be intentional about this, which is why almost every Friday is art day in my house.

So here’s a little of what we did on various Fridays, using Amy’s Issue 6: Math + Art.

distorted shapes

the five-year-old did this one

Then he took the triangle I made and did something different, which is always okay.

I was the only one that did the paper weaving, although the five-year-old decided to do his own version of it. I don’t require either of my boys to do the art lessons because I think art should be voluntary and fun. If they see the possibilities through what I do, I know they have still learned something.

The best lesson was on the Fibonacci sequence. The eight-year-old loved this, and we watched videos about the Fibonacci sequence to supplement the learning.

Then my son came up with the idea to measure popsicle sticks with Fibonacci numbers and make a little sculpture with it.

Exploring mandalas. This also made a nice lesson on different cultures as mandalas are used in various religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism and American Native American cultures too. Google “mandala” and you’ll find many beautiful images and designs.

See how fun math can be?!

Art Fridays: Homeschool Art Lessons

~ shelli ~ 13 Comments

I was pleasantly surprised that they got into my lesson about still life.

If I had more time, I would write a post after each art session, but instead I’m trying to catch up this homeschool year on my blog. (This is why I’ve been posting more lately, or actually, why I scheduled a bunch of posts over a few days in early February. Those will eventually run out. As you can see, I blog in spurts. Or between magazine issues. 🙂 )

So here’s a little assemblage of various “art days” that usually take place on Fridays, though art is not restricted to that day. The boys do a lot of art projects on their own, but Fridays are the days when I initiate something, and sometimes I try to teach them a new technique and tell them about an artist who used that technique. I am neither an artist, nor do I know a lot about art, so I have used a few resources to help me out. My favorite go-to resource for this has been Amy Hood’s Art Together e-zine.

Some Fridays when I’m not (ahem) prepared, I say things like “My only requirement of you today is to draw a picture in your sketchbook.” (This usually results in more than one piece of artwork.) Or one morning, I woke up early and had already started to paint some of the nature collection that my son had left on the table the day before. When my boys saw me doing that, they immediately wanted to join me. (I didn’t know that this is called a “provocation” until I read Amy Hood’s recent art column in home / school / life.)

Sometimes I try to teach the boys a new technique, and they are not interested in doing the project, such as when I showed them Joseph Cornell’s art boxes (via Art Together). Usually they want to do something else like paint or draw. This is fine. Unlike math and reading, I don’t require them to do the art lessons because I think art should be fun and voluntary. When they see me produce the art, they are still learning about that technique, and they learn a new possibility.

Looking back over these art sessions, I’m reminded that there was a time when I felt like our homeschool was desperately missing out on art. Because of that, I was intentional about starting “Art Fridays.” I’m so pleased with how this has turned out, and I think my boys have benefitted from it greatly. Of course, there are other things I feel like we are missing out on, such as Spanish lessons or belonging to a big homeschool group, but alas, one thing at a time. As many homeschool moms have told me, you can’t do everything, and you shouldn’t worry about doing everything, and someday you may look back and realize you did more than enough.

Click on an image to enlarge and read the caption. Also, a big thanks to Mo Akwati for his tutorial on how to draw a moth, which my dissatisfaction of my own drawing inspired him to do.

Printmaking Lesson inspired by Amy Hood’s Art Together e-zine. We read about Hokusai and Japanese printmaking too.
8yo’s whale stamp is so cool.
Stamps and feathers by 5yo.
Feathers made a cool effect.
8yo’s first attempt with Speedy Carve Block and Lino Cutters that I bought at hobby store.
More printmaking by 5yo and me.
My watercolor attempts. I used a black Sharpie for outline. **My dissatisfaction with this inspired Mo Awkati to do a tutorial on his website for me. Please see blog post for more information.
At his request, I drew this feather, and he painted it.
Painting nature objects — what a great morning.
8yo’s completed starfish.
Another go at printmaking. 8yo’s swordfish.
The completed swordfish by 8yo.
One morning I had to go to an appointment with 5yo, and I left 8yo instructions to draw in his sketchbook. He enjoyed that requirement.
8yo hasn’t been as interested in drawing as 5yo. But he found a “How to Draw Castles, Dragon and Knights” book I had left on the shelf, and he drew several pictures using it. He also drew several dinosaurs from a “How to draw Dinosaurs” book that I had bought for 5yo.
One Friday morning was just a free-for-all, and 5yo decided to draw feathers. He was frustrated with his drawings until I showed him he could trace a real feather. (He collects feathers too!)
So excited about his feather drawings!
Very serious work.
Friday Art Day is an open and free art exploration day in our house.
When I asked for one drawing in his sketchbook, 8yo decided to try out our new watercolor paints.
He drew and painted a Luna Moth
Completed Luna Moth. (He has an interest in moths. It’s fun to see it come up now and again.)
Some of my own work. Tried to draw and paint 8yo’s deer skull.
Leaves are my favorites.
I was pleased with this one.
Our last art lesson was about Joseph Cornell’s boxes which I learned about in Art Together. I was the only one who made a box. I used my own photographs, some twigs and painted leaves. 5yo painted the green ones for me. (8yo keeps saying he’s going to make a box. We shall see.)

 

Homeschool Art Lesson: Exploring Line

~ shelli ~ 8 Comments

So far I have had the most fun doing the suggested activities from Amy Hood’s fantastic e-zine, Art Together. Her second issue discusses line.

As I wrote in my main post about art, 1st Grade Art Explorations, I have wanted to introduce some artists and their techniques to my son. We do a lot of art and building around here, and my son is developing his creativity tremendously from the way we homeschool. I hope these occasional formal lessons will give him more to think about as he continues on with his own creative work.

I’m not usually very good about planning lessons more than five minutes before we’re going to sit down to do them, but when I read Amy’s e-zine focusing on line, it inspired a trip to the craft store. There are lots of activities, information about art materials, and an artist “spotlight” (in this case, Piet Mondrian), but for my young boys, I picked two activities that I thought they would enjoy: 1) drawing with tape, and 2) wire as line. I also knew I wanted to read the short introduction, “Types of Line,” to my seven-year-old so that he would understand why we were doing these activities.

I didn’t tell my children what we were going to do before we went to the craft store. They just enjoyed piling up the new art supplies in the cart, including two fancy rolls of tape that I let them pick out, and some wire that I got in the jewelry making section. (I always keep clay on hand, so we already had that.)

Of course, my seven-year-old wanted to know what we were going to do with all this stuff, so on the way home in the car, I started to explain to him that we were going to explore “line.” And this is where not having time to blog very much doesn’t serve me well because I can’t remember our conversation. But I do remember that it was terrific. We were looking out the windows on the way home and noticing all the lines – the lines of the buildings, store signs, painted lines on the streets, and the light poles. My son was making so many discoveries and connections all on his own – I wish I had a recording of his awesome observations. We discovered that the whole world is made up of lines!!

After that he also enjoyed listening to the introduction in Amy’s magazine, and both boys loved these activities. Below are our creations. To learn more details about these activities, be sure to check out Amy’s e-zine.

Exploring line with tape! My seven-year-old made a leopard with this leopard-print tape.

I think my four-year-old was inspired by his brother. I helped him put on the ears, nose, mouth and feet. Notice he drew spots on it too!

Exploring line with clay and wire was so much fun! I love this butterfly that my seven-year-old did! It was all his idea!

These are my abstract creations. Exploring line with wire and clay.

My four-year-old asked me to shape the clay, and he wanted to do the same thing I did. These are his wire creations. I love them!

Well, that concludes this long series about formal art lessons in our homeschool with the bonus column about our field trip to the art museum, at least until we do our next art project! If you missed any of the earlier ones, they are all listed with links in my introduction: 1st Grade Art Explorations.

Homeschool Art Lesson: Making a Color Wheel

~ shelli ~ 1 Comment

So far I have had more fun doing the suggested activities from Amy Hood’s fantastic e-zine, Art Together. Her first issue discusses color. Who doesn’t love color?

As I wrote in my main post about art, 1st Grade Art Explorations, I have wanted to introduce some artists and their techniques to my son. We do a lot of art and building around here, and my son is developing his creativity tremendously from the way we homeschool. I hope these occasional formal lessons will give him more to think about as he continues on with his own creative work.

As Amy points out in her magazine, you can spend a lot of time studying color and the rules that go along with them. For my young children, I wanted to start simple. Before this exercise, we had already done a lot of fun color mixing over the years. My children are familiar with how you can mix colors to make new colors. But I had not introduced them to the color wheel.

Amy has a great tutorial on her website for this exercise, so I’m not going into great detail here. Click here for her instructions.

We made a simple color wheel with only the primary and secondary colors. The primary colors are red, blue and yellow. You can’t get these colors from mixing other colors together. The secondary colors are orange, green and purple. You get these colors from mixing the primary colors together. (You can figure out which ones to mix together by looking at the color wheel – each secondary color has its two primary colors that you need to mix to get it next to it.)

This was my very first “formal art lesson.” I wondered if my boys would have the patience to complete the exercise, especially since they are used to painting whatever they want. But when I told them to wait for my instructions, they were very good, and I love their color wheels! I think they make great art for our activity room wall!

My goal here was to simply point out how we can use a color wheel to find complementary colors. Colors that are opposite each other are complementary colors, and when we’re drawing or painting with colors (or even photographing), we can use these colors together to create more contrast. That is, the colors will seem to pop when used together. (I highly recommend reading Amy’s magazine because she goes into more detail about this and offers examples to look at.)

Have you made a color wheel with your children?

Homeschool Art Lesson: Tommasso Masaccio

~ shelli ~ 1 Comment

Above: After he had his profile traced, my four-year-old painted it. I love it.

This is the third art lesson we did using the book Discovering Great Artists: Hands-On Art for Children.  I’m not going into great detail about the artist or details on how to do the activity because you can get those details from the book, but rather I want to show you what my children did and what we learned from it. For each lesson I read the brief introduction about the artist to my son, and we looked up images of the artist’s work online.

As I wrote in my main post about art, 1st Grade Art Explorations, I have wanted to introduce some artists and their techniques to my son. We do a lot of art and building around here, and my son is developing his creativity tremendously from the way we homeschool. I hope these occasional formal lessons will give him more to think about as he continues on with his own creative work.

As the book tells us, Tommasso Massacio was famous for his portraits during the Renaissance. He also liked to add details such as hats and jewelry.  This was a fun activity in which we all took turns sitting sideways in front of a wall, and I set up a flashlight so that a shadow of our profiles appeared on the wall.  We taped a piece of paper to the wall and then we traced our shadows.

I traced my seven-year-old’s profile, and he traced my four-year-old’s and my profile. However, that is as far as he wanted to go with this activity. He was not into painting the profiles at all.

But my four-year-old painted his own profile, and I think it has become one of my favorite pieces of art in our house! Look at that color! I love it! I think Massacio would approve, don’t you?

He inspired me to paint my seven-year-old’s profile with lots of color too, which you can see below on the right, although I don’t like mine as well as his. I told my seven-year-old I was painting his brain – indeed, I think that his brain is full of wonderful color and imaginative things!

Above: My four-year-old inspired me to make a colorful profile of my eldest son. (on the right)

Meanwhile, my seven-year-old busied himself with his own art. He’s very much into dragons right now, and he’s been very interested in learning about (and building) the Mayflower too. So he decided he wanted to paint a sea dragon attacking the Mayflower!

My seven-year-old was not so interested in this exercise, so he painted this picture of a dragon attaching the Mayflower.

Please share a link with some of the art you’ve made lately.

Homeschool Art Lesson: Fra Giovanni Angelico

~ shelli ~ 1 Comment

This is the second art lesson we did using the book Discovering Great Artists: Hands-On Art for Children.  I’m not going to go into great detail about the artist or details on how to do the activity because you can get those details from the book, but rather I want to show you what my children did and what we learned from it. For each lesson I read the brief introduction about the artist to my son, and we looked up images of the artist’s work online.

As I wrote in my main post about art, 1st Grade Art Explorations, I have wanted to introduce some artists and their techniques to my son. We do a lot of art and building around here, and my son is developing his creativity tremendously from the way we homeschool. I hope these occasional formal lessons will give him more to think about as he continues on with his own creative work.

Fra Giovanni Angelico, according to Discovering Great Artists, was an Italian monk who was one of the greatest painters of the early Renaissance. The book also tells us, “Artists of this era often gave halos to the angels and people in their paintings…. Halos were often made with real gold, not with gold paint. Gold metal was pounded into a very thin sheet called ‘gold leaf’, then glued onto the wall or canvas or varnish. Young artists paint beautiful pictures with “silver leaf” decoration using everyday aluminum foil.

My four-year-old wasn’t interested in this exercise, but from this photo, you can see what my seven-year-old and I did. He did the dragon on the right. (He’s really into dragons right now.) I did the sun.

He made the dragon’s wing out of aluminum foil and then tried painting over it. We discovered that this didn’t work so well. The paint dried and began to flake off. He also messed up something around the feet of the dragon, and I filled in that area with white paint, trying to show him how he can blend his mistakes in, making shadows or light. I think his painting turned out quite nice.

Homeschool Art Lesson: Giotto di Bondone

~ shelli ~ 2 Comments

“Motorcycle” by the seven-year-old using egg tempura paint

This is the first art lesson we did using the book Discovering Great Artists: Hands-On Art for Children.  I’m not going into great detail about the artist or how to do the activity because you can get that from the book, but rather I want to show you what my children did and what we learned from it.

As I wrote in my main post about art, 1st Grade Art Explorations, I have wanted to introduce some artists and their techniques to my son. We do a lot of art and building around here, and my son is developing his creativity tremendously from the way we homeschool. I hope these occasional formal lessons will give him more to think about as he continues on with his own creative work.

Giotto di Bondone lived from 1266-1337. He was an artist of the Italian Renaissance.  As the book tells us, “Many paintings of Giotto’s time were made with egg tempera paint on special panels of wood. There were no art stores, so each artist had to make paint by grinding minerals, clay, berries, or even insects into fine powder and mixing this pigment with egg yolk and water.”

Painting by the four-year-old using egg tempura paint

I like Discovering Great Artists because it tells just a little information about each artist, which is all my seven-year-old and four-year-old care to know! (So for older kids who want to delve further into an artist’s life – this is not the book for them.) My seven-year-old does seem to enjoy looking at art by each of the artists on the Internet. (The book does not provide examples of the artists’ work, but there are plenty to be found online.)

We didn’t mix egg yolk and insects, which would have been quite interesting! We followed the book’s instructions and used egg and colored chalk.  I thought the colors turned out quite nice, and we were all pleased with our artwork.

My seven-year-old is prone to outbursts when his art doesn’t look exactly like what he sees in his head. While he was painting his motorcycle, he messed up the back wheel.  I have been trying to encourage him to turn mistakes into something else and also realize that it doesn’t have to be perfect. Someday I may tackle this issue in a post of its own, but for now I’ll say that I think perfectionist kids need a lot of encouragement, and they need to be shown how other people have made mistakes and work through them, but they also just need time to mature too.

Painting by an adult using egg tempura paint

Homeschooling: 1st Grade Art Explorations

~ shelli ~ 14 Comments

When it comes to art, I’m extremely grateful that we’re homeschooling. This may not make me popular, but I have to admit that “crafts” make me cringe.  I rarely look at Pinterest because it makes my head swirl in a bad way.

Don’t take me wrong – I don’t think crafts are bad.  In fact, my kids love them just like most children love them.  My son loves them so much that he likes to look up crafts when he has something in mind he wants to make – I don’t mind that at all. It’s his idea after all, and he’s choosing which craft idea to follow.

I have on occasion (maybe twice?) looked up a specific craft, usually for a holiday like Native American Day. I wanted to teach my son a little bit about Native Americans, and I thought he would enjoy making a “totem pole,” which he did. I have also used crafts and specific art lessons for other reasons, which I’ll explain below.

In general, I don’t like the “Here kids…let’s all make this.” I would much rather give my kids a bunch of paint and paper and let them have fun with it. Let them explore. Experiment. Be creative and come up with their own ideas…not someone else’s idea. If they make a mess, that’s fine with me. (This is one of the reasons that Project-based Homeschooling appealed to me so much. It’s an important tenet in this educational philosophy.)

We are not just bound to paint and paper either. I’ve written about all the supplies I keep on hand, and you can find that here. Also, The Power of Time and Materials is one of my popular posts on this subject.

I realize that most art teachers and facilitators of craft projects would also want exactly what I want… to let these projects lead to the child’s own exploration of art. Get the children excited about creating and making things…. Yes! Exactly. If crafts are used in that way, I think it’s a great idea. But I think they can be over-used, and if the facilitator tries to prevent the child from veering off in another direction (maybe making the craft into something entirely different), that’s bad.

Try putting some art supplies in front of a bunch of children and telling them to have fun. Can they get started on their own? Or do they look at you, helpless because they need instructions? It all depends on how much freedom, time, and materials the children have been given!

I’ve created a room in my house where all our art and craft supplies are accessible to my kids, and at any time, they can say, “I want to paint,” and they can do it. I’ve taught them how to be careful – I usually help them get the paints out, and I have laid down some ground rules such as “the paint stays on the table.” Likewise, I have taught (and I’m still teaching) my kids how to hold the scissors and how to clean up after they are finished.

I’m really happy that by doing this, I’ve fostered some very creative kids. They don’t “create” everyday or even every week, but when I look over all the photographs I’ve taken of their artwork and building projects, I know we’re off to a good start. (And I have a bunch of little child-led projects that I need to blog about. In good time!)

This year my oldest son is in “1st grade,” and I want him to learn more about art. By that I mean formal art – about artists and their techniques. We don’t have time for formal art lessons on a regular basis, but this is a subject that we’ll be building on during his entire education, so that’s okay. And if it becomes an interest of one of my children, we’ll definitely make more time for it.

It’s also important in project-based homeschooling to teach your student how to use tools, different mediums and introduce them to different experiences, so that’s exactly what I’m doing here too. And yes, sometimes it includes a ‘craft.’ See? I don’t think they are all that bad.

I’m going to write about our art lessons in separate posts, but below I’m listing the resources I’ve used and plan to use as we continue our life-long exploration of Art.

  • Discovering Great Artists: Hands-On Art for Children in the Styles of the Great Masters by Mary Ann F. Kohl and Kim Solga – I use the Kindle version of this book, and I like it.  There are lessons and activities about artists starting from the Renaissance and until present time. We have skipped some of them, finding activities that I think my boys would enjoy. (And finding the ones with easy on-hand materials too.) The lessons are simple and short, which is a good fit for my very young children. (This book also has an excellent list of art resources; it’s worth the price just for that!)
    • My main goal with these art lessons is exposing my son to great art. I don’t think he’ll remember the artist’s names (I don’t) or the tidbits about their lives, but it’s a good starting-off place. This book does not contain photographs of the artwork by these artists. I have to look them up online, but I think my seven-year-old and I like that the best: just skimming through some images and seeing something new and interesting. (My four-year-old usually likes doing the art projects, but he doesn’t give a hoot about looking at the art yet.) So far we have studied:
  • Right now my favorite resource for art instruction is Amy Hood’s e-zine {Art Together}. So far Amy has written three magazines, and I’ve purchased them all. They are full of information, activities and encouragement for making art with your children! I have picked activities out of the magazine that I knew my boys would enjoy now, but there’s information in there for deeper study, so I know I’ll be able to return to them in the future. My seven-year-old has enjoyed reading parts of the magazine with me too. My four-year-old just likes to try his hand at the art making. I have not yet had the chance to read her latest e-zine on printmaking (I just purchased it!), but I have read and done these activities from the first two:
    • Making a Color Wheel inspired by {Art Together} Issue One: Color (and I also referred to her very good blog post on the same subject, Make A Simple Color Wheel)
    • Line Art inspired by {Art Together} Issue Two: Line (and I have a great story to go along with this one.)

(I will follow-up with posts about these art lessons and add links as they go up on my blog.)

Future Art Studies

Here are some things I have in mind for future art studies.

  • Oxford First Book of Art – I found this great little introductory book used on Amazon for under $7. Perhaps I need to lay it on the kitchen table and just let the kids discover it! It has some beautiful images of famous artist’s work. It also has some activities and commentary.
  • Museums – My boys are going to have to get a little older (UPDATE: We did take them to a museum!), but I look forward to taking them to some nearby art museums such as the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens. I know the High Museum has Homeschool Days, and the Georgia Museum of Art has some great kid’s programs too. I just haven’t looked at them closely enough yet.
  • And I can’t help but give a plug for home / school / life magazine. (Disclaimer: I’m the senior editor!) We will be offering art resources in this magazine, particularly Amy Hood’s regular Art Start column.