Fourth Week of Classes: Pablo Picasso

This week we discussed Pablo Picasso and Cubism. As you can imagine, younger kids have a hard time grasping the concept of Cubism. So, I breezed over the topic with my elementary class and then told them the folk tale about Tan Grams. They then made their own tan gram figures:



My middle school boys were both in different places. We talked about Cubism while one young man finished his Van Gogh piece from last week and the other began his own Picasso inspired work.

Third Week of Classes: Vincent van Gogh

Woo Hoo! Time to learn about Vincent van Gogh. I love van Gogh's work. The kids learned how van Gogh's work wasn't really discovered and/or thought of as brilliant until after his tragic death. Sure, he was a little coo coo for Cocoa Puffs. But van Gogh had a truly original style I find beautiful. His particular style was later coined as Expressionism. His short choppy strokes and dollops of color made his work completely unique to what was going on at the time.

My elementary class took inspiration from van Gogh's Sunflowers.

My middle school boys were a little less thrilled about creating art with flowers, so we googled some alternate images to inspire them.

Second Week of Classes: Egypt

This week we learned a little about Egyptian art and Hieroglyphics. Some of the characteristics of Egyptian art is that while their bodies are always depicted forward facing, their actual faces are only drawn from a profile view. This doesn't hold true to the sculptures/statues, but for their etchings/relief sculptures.

First Week of Classes: Pre-History

This week was my first week of Winter '09 classes. We learned about Pre-History. This time in the Earth's history is before there were any written forms of communication. There were no alphabets or consistent use of symbols to create a written documentation of events. All we have to go by are the drawings left behind by the people of that era. To this day, cave drawings are still being discovered and interpreted. We also learned, that the most likely purpose for these drawings were as instructions and/or warnings. This was the earth's inhabitants only form of communication.

So, for our activity, we learned how to age paper using coffee, tea bags and heat. We then practiced what we learned and tried to emulate cave drawings. We also recognized that most cave drawings are very simplistic with little to no detail. They also contain a very muted color palette.

Below is a sampling of my student's work!