This week in our art class, based on Discovering Great Artists, we studied Matisse.

Henri Matisse was born in France in 1869.

Matisse is regarded as the father of the Fauvist movement.  His earlier paintings were in the Post-Impressionist style - still recognisable figures, but using strong, bright colours.  His style was considered quite shocking for the times. 

The Rumanian Blouse, 1940.

When Matisse was diagnosed with cancer in 1941, leaving him wheelchair-bound, he started to experiment with paper cut-outs and collages. This is what we based our artwork on.

Matisse designed this stained glass window for the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence.

It is called the "Tree of Life".

This collage is called "The Beasts of the Sea":

This collage reminded us of sea-weed or a bush.

And apparently, you can't study Matisse without studying this paper collage:

See if you can find the animal depicted!

 If you guessed a snail, you're right!  If not, I can't blame you! 

These are our collages inspired by Matisse.

Check out Kathy Barbro's great site, Art Projects for Kids, for some great art lesson ideas and a Mini Abstract Mural set.  This set contains a PDF file of three different abstract murals, inspired by famous abstract artists.  I used a page from the Marisse mini mural for a colouring page in the bottom centre of the photo above (I haven't finished yet!).

Barb (Harmony Art Mom) also has a great entry on studying Matisse here, including links to activities and a biography of Matisse.

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Today we had our first art lesson with a friend of mine and her children.  We are using the book Discovering Great Artists.

and art cards from Child-sized Masterpieces:

 The first artist we chose to study was Piet Mondrian.

Piet Mondrian was born in Amsterdam, Holland in 1872.  Earlier in his career, he painted traditional Dutch landscapes, but after moving to Paris his style gradually changed to an abstract, cubist style, which he is more famous for:

We all had a go at our own designs, inspired by Mondrian's work, and stuck to using only the primary colours to fill in some of the spaces.

We used graph paper to decide where our lines would be, then traced them onto thicker paper with a sharpie pen and coloured random spaces with either felt-tip markers or oil pastels.

This is what we came up with:

When you first look at Mondrian's paintings, it is easy to think that they are just lines and bits of colour here and there.  But my friend and I commented to eachother on the different ways the girls (we have all girls of school age) chose to place their lines, and which ones to colour in.  Some were very symmetrical, some chose to do lots of little lines and others even chose to add in diagonal lines.  We all thoroughly enjoyed it and can't wait for our next art lesson.

For some more ideas on art lessons based on Mondrian's paintings, check out Art with Mrs Smith - there's even a Mondrian cake!

Barb at Harmony Art Mom shares how she uses Child-sized masterpieces here.

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And to complete the "Arts on Thursday" picture, we listened to one of our new Psalms CDs by Jason Coghill, whom we were so blessed to have listened to in person at church last night.

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