This month we have moved on to studying a new composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

I have made up a journal/worksheet for my kids to grab and use. If you would like to download the Classical Music Journal, click on the link below.

Today, we got back into a regular schedule of studying famous artists and composers. We had the pleasure of starting out with studying about the French artist, Paul Cezanne.

 Self Portrait, 1875-1877 

There were two main lessons that we learned from researching about Cezanne. First, here is a quote from a letter that he wrote to his childhood best friend Emile Zola. And it won't be surprising to you all why I love it so much.

"...all the pictures painted inside, in the studio, will never be as good as those done outside. When out-of-door scenes are represented, the contrasts between the figures and the ground is astounding and the landscape is magnificent."

When my daughter read this in a book today, she announced how appropriate that was for us! Cezanne's preference was to place himself in front of nature, painting at the scene.

The second lesson we learned was to be true to who you are as an artist. Cezanne was ahead of his time; his artwork was unlike the typical realistic, 3-D art of the time. He was different, he wanted his paintings to have a more flat appearance with varied perspectives. Despite critics being really tough on his different methods Cezanne stayed true to who he was as an artist right up until he passed away. And it was only after then that his artwork started to get noticed and became famous.

My daughter has a different style to the way she does art, she likes to do everything to look animated, like cartoons. After learning about Cezanne today she proclaimed, "That's the way I feel when I try to draw something very realistic like a lot of artists do, I feel weird and I can't ever be happy with it. But when I do it the way I like to, I'm always pleased with what I do."

Next Tuesday for our Art lesson I will challenge her to paint a still life (Cezanne did many still life paintings) or a nature scene outside, giving it her style, making it her own. I'll post about that then.

In the meantime, here are two excellent books on Paul Cezanne that we used and that I recommend, as there is much more to learn about him!

                                  

Also, here is an online gallery of his works:

www.abcgallery.com/C/cezanne/cezanne.html

Warning - as with just about all artists of that time, there are some explicit paintings.

“To find joy in the sky, the trees, the flowers… There are always flowers for those who want to see them.”

- Henri Matisse

This weekend my older daughter and I had a little mother/daughter time, which for us often times leads to something artsy (who says art can't be done on off-school hours?).  Recently, we had checked out a book from our library called Over in the Artic, which is illustrated by Jill Dubin.  Ms. Dubin uses cut paper art for the illustrations.  I was really intrigued by this art, I think it's beautiful!  Using scrap pieces of paper, any kind, you can create beautiful artwork.  Here is an example from the book (you can see more at her site):

Scrapbook Papers




Hannah's Beginning Work




Mom's Beginning Work



Continuing to Work




Mom's Finished Spring Scene



Hannah's Desert Scene

I think this is become a favorite of ours to do from now on, there are so many possibilities!

Today, we finished up our seasonal art study using Nature's Paintbox.

For the winter season our focus was on using the medium pen and ink.  I also took note of the fact that the artist used the technique cross hatching.  You can see it in the girl's coat in this illustration from the book.

I recognized it from another book that we are familiar with, Wee Gills by Munro Leaf, which has an abundance of the cross hatching technique used.  Wee Gillis also appears to be done in Pen and Ink.  So we also flipped through it to observe the medium and technique a bit more.

Another observation from Nature's Paintbox was that one of the illustrations was done from a "birds eye view", so we also discussed that.

While completing our renderings, we pulled out our Vivaldi CD and finished up the final suite, Winter,  from The Four Seasons.  While drawing and listening we talked about what wintery visions the music brought to our minds:  a blizzard, snow floating down, squirrels scampering about, the wind whistling through the snow, etc.

Here are our ink drawings:

Links for the other seasons:

Nature's Paintbox - Spring

Nature's Paintbox - Summer

Nature's Painbox - Autumn

A haze on the far horizon,

The infinite, tender sky,

The rich, ripe tint of the cornfields,

And the wild geese sailing high --

And all over upland and lowland

The charm of the goldenrod--

Some of us call it autumn,

And others call it God.

(taken from "Each in His Own Tongue", by William Herbert Carruth)

Today we completed our art project for Autumn using the book Nature's Paintbox, by P. Thomas.  The medium they chose in the book is oil paints, however we chose to use tempera paints instead.  I also tied this lesson in with the above amazing poem.

We first read the Autumn pages from Nature's Paintbox, discussing all the vivid, rich and warm colors the artist used.

Then we read the poem (at the top of the entry) several times, talking about it's meaning.  We then discussed a list of colors that would be used in painting a picture to go with this poem.

Then we set about making our visions of Autumn!

Hannah

Mom

And of course the lesson wouldn't be complete without a little Antonio Vivaldi, The Four Seasons - Autumn, playing in the background!  This lesson also ties in very nicely to those beautiful, crisp Autumn nature walks, full of warm vibrant colors and feelings.  Each time we have been outside for our nature time lately, we have taken notice of these feelings and colors all around us.

Links to the previous Nature's Paintbox lessons we have done:

Nature's Paintbox - Spring

Nature's Paintbox - Summer

 Red Canna, by Georgia O'Keeffe

This past week, Hannah and I came up with a creative way to do picture study and also get in a little creative writing at the same time.  You know how I love to combine lessons, right?!!

I handed Hannah a few books featuring artwork by Georgia O'Keeffe, our featured artist this month, and had her look through them in another room.  Then she secretely picked out her favorite painting, she chose Red Canna as you see above.  However, she kept this a secret from me.  I then told her to independently study her chosen artwork for several minutes and write up a short, but vivid description of the painting.  And Mom was going to have to guess which one was her favorite just from her description.  Here is what she wrote up for me:

"The colors were so wonderfully put together.  Beautiful purples and red were so wonderfully put in a burst of color.  Waves pour out with color.  Splashing on a canvas is a flower with grace and beauty.  Oils shine red, orange, yellow, white and purples."

Then she handed me her description and the book from which she chose it.  Her description was so beautifully written and very accurate, I was able to find her favorite painting in just a few minutes!  And I quickly agreed with her that Ms. O'Keeffe's Red Canna painting is truly breaktaking in beauty.

Yesterday was another great day for us with Art and Music!  We started some new lessons created by Barb at Drawing with Children: Nature Journal Style.  Using the book, Drawing with Children, by Mona Brookes, she adapts the lessons to be used with Nature Study and journaling.  With this first lesson we got in an Art lesson, a Nature walk, and completed a Nature journal page.

We first completed the lesson from the book on the 5 Basic Elements of Shape:  The Dot Family, The Circle Family, the Straight Line Family, the Curved Line Family, and the Angle Line Family.  Then, equipped with what we had learned, we ventured outside to explore in Nature.  While we were on our walk we played one of the suggested visual games from the book.  I would point to items in Nature and ask the kids which elements of shape they could find in that item.  We analyzed so many different things such as:  trees, wildflowers, mushrooms, leaves, logs, insects, rocks, butterflies, birds, etc.  This was a great awareness activity!

After we had done this for awhile, we returned back inside to put the lesson into practice.  By following directions in the book, we all took our hand at drawing our favorite kind of bird to place in our Nature journals.

Hannah's American Goldfinch

Alex's Bird Chasing a Cicada

(evidently he had seen this earlier in the day!)

Mom's Indigo Bunting

While we completed the Nature journal page I talked for just a moment about the Oboe Woodwind instrument and showed them a photo of one, because we had never seen one up close, and played Antonio Vivaldi's Oboe Sonata for them to hear and thoroughly enjoyed the sound of the Oboe.

Here is a website with information about the Oboe, including a link to hear the sound:  Hear the Oboe

Black and Purple Petunias, by Georgia O'Keeffe

I really love it when I can combine lessons!  And yesterday I was able to combine many lessons into one fantastic project!  For this year, I have our Art and Music lessons scheduled on Wednesdays.  We do not try to accomplish a great amount of other subjects this day, because I wanted this day to mostly focus on this.  Because the truth is that Art projects usually take a larger amount of time, but they are so worth it!

I'm going to attempt to walk you step-by-step through what we did:

1) Read a Book:  Through Georgia's Eyes, by Rachel Rodriquez

- This is truly a great living book on the life of Georgia O'Keefe!  It was our favorite that we checked out at the library.

2) Discussed Ms. O'Keeffe's Style of Painting Flowers.

- I showed them several examples of Georgia's flower paintings.  We discussed how she saw great beauty in flowers and she painted them big, close-up, and colorful in hopes that other people could see them the way she would!  Isn't that beautiful?  I want others to see them that way as well!

3)  Nature Walk

- Took a nature walk focused on looking at the details of wildflowers.  Each of the children picked their favorite flower, which they would be using for an art project.  Hannah and Alex both picked Chicory, I picked Spotted Touch-Me-Not, and Gabby picked a Robin's Plantain.

Also while we were on our nature walk, using super macro on the camera, the kids and I tried our hand at taking wildflower photos as close up as possible, just like Georgia would have liked it! After uploading the photos on our computer, we cropped them in even closer!  Can you see the beauty?

Chicory

Queen Anne's Lace

Black-Eyed Susan 

After returning inside and placing our picked flowers in some water vases, I moved onto the next step.

4) Read the Summer Section of Nature's Paintbox, by Patricia Thomas

- We've been working our way through the seasons in the above book.  Our Spring study can be found HERE.  For Summer, the illustrations are done in watercolors, my personal favorite art medium.  So, we used watercolors to do our art project!

5) Listen to The Four Seasons - Summer, Masters of Classical Music - Antonio Vivaldi

- I put this CD on to listen to while completing our Art project - specifically on The Four Seasons - Summer suite.  I reminded the kids about the last time we listened to Vivaldi and about The Four Seasons suites.  And like the last time we listened to it, we discussed the music and how it sounded like the season.

6) Complete Art Project:  Georgia O'Keeffe Watercolor Flowers

- The children used their selection of wildflower to paint a watercolor picture, George O'Keeffe style.  I gleaned this art idea from this book:  Discovering Great Artsts, by MaryAnn Kohl.

The two older children used Reeve's brand watercolors, it's an excellent quality paint for the price, and Loew-Cornell brand artist brushes.  For the toddler, Crayola watercolors and brush worked just fine! ;)

Alex is my art scoffer, so sometimes I can expect refusal from him, but he gave this project a try!  However, he did not like working with the watercolors and became very frustrated and discouraged with his work.  He was about to quit and I asked him if he'd like to try a different medium.  He chose good old-fashioned crayons.  And he ended up very pleased with his project!  And he got the point - he drew a smaller Chicory in the background and a larger one in the front to get your attention - Georgia style.

Hannah also did a great job with her Chicory.

And, of course, I couldn't refuse trying my hand at it!

Spotted Touch-Me-Not

Gabby, well, she did her painting "toddler-style" and only painted for about 3 minutes!

We used our final projects as a fantastic addition to our nature journals!!