Edgar Degas was born on July 19, 1834 in Paris, France. Degas originally studied law before taking up art. He liked to paint indoors and is well known for his many paintings of dancers. He used charcoal and pastels as often as he used paints. He liked to paint/sculpt how life was and not posed. He said he liked to paint life as if he was "painting life through a keyhole". As the artist grew older he had severe eye problems but still made paintings, sculptures, and drawings, from memory. His work was shown along with Monet, Renoir, and Cezanne. He died in Paris, France in 1917, when he was 83 years old.
One of my favorite consequences of doing a study on Degas was being exposed to all the great art work that he created in addition to his paintings of dancers. I had no idea how diverse he was and I especially enjoy his sculptures, mainly the horses.
We used several books for the above information and if you are interested in finding more information on Degas or any other famous artists please click here.
I chose this clip because it shows a variety of Degas' work:
We did two projects because I couldn't decide which one I wanted to do more. I love working with pastels and I had just received an order of burlap.
Our first project was from The Usborne ART Treasury. Pastel dancers. An easy project using black construction paper and pastels. It gives you tips on how to make the dancers. We personalized it a bit (because I made a mistake and didn't like the hair on mine) and cut it out. The girls really liked this so they cut theirs out also.
D wasn't as into making this project as others but he did like to mimic the dancers:
Our next project was from the book Discovering Great Artists by MaryAnn Kohl and Kim Solga.
This was a project also done with pastels. Chalk on Cloth. It called for a cotton cloth with a rough weave and we used burlap. You soak the fabric in milk and then draw a picture on quickly before the cloth dries. You turn the painting upside down on a piece of scrap paper and old newspapers, then you cover the painting with aluminum foil and iron. This sets the chalk design into the fabric.
Taylor:
Brooke:
I wasn't sure what we were going to do with them but using them as book covers on our travel binders worked out very well.
Henri Matisse was born in Cateau-Cambresis, France in 1869. Unlike other artists, he didn't know he wanted to be an artist when he was young. Matisse was studying to be a lawyer when he became sick with appendicitis and his mother bought him a set of paints to occupy his time while he recovered. Within a few years he gave up law and became a painter. Matisse loved to use bold color. Toward the end of his life, he became too sick to paint so he cut shapes out of paper and arranged them (by himself or through the use of an assistant) in a collage. He called this "drawing with scissors".
We used several books for the above information and if you are interested in finding more information on Matisse or any other famous artists please click here.
Our project today came from The Usborne ART Treasury book called Colorful Collage which puts Matisse's "drawing with scissors" into action.
We began our artist study with Pablo Picasso. Picasso was born in 1881 in Malaga, Spain. He moved to France around 1900. He said "I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them" and he loved to shock and surprise people with his work. Most of all, he wanted to inspire us to dream. During his Blue Period (1901-1904) which was before he became famous for his Cubism, he painted with shades of blue paint to represent his paintings about loneliness and despair. After this was the Rose (sometimes known as Pink) Period (1904-1906) where he used warmer colors to represent his moods. The art project that follows is taken from this time of his life.
We used several books for the above information and if you are interested in finding more information on Picasso or any other famous artists please click here.
For a few of our studies we also used a series of art activity packs created by Mila Boutan. There is a very informative book about the artist and his work. We didn't use the activity that accompanied the pack (this was true for all the packs we got of this series) but we did like the book.
Our project came from the book Discovering Great Artists by MaryAnn F. Kohl and Kim Solga. It is called One Color Painting. The kids each chose a main color and then mixed in other colors to get shades of their main color. We made 6 shades for each child (Brooke chose green, Taylor chose blue and D chose, you guessed it, yellow) and then they began painting.
If there are any recipes that you've seen in the past on our blog that you still interested in, you can find them at:
http://www.epicurious.com/community/myepi/myrecipebox?category=&name=&sort=&type=F
If you need any help, please let me know.
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