Paul Klee Picture Study

Dream City, Paul Klee, 1921, Water & Oil.

Before starting our art classes using the book Discovering Great Artists, I was dubious about much of what we call "modern art". However, I have come to appreciate much of the art we have been looking at, mainly for the art itself. I don't want to delve too deeply into the hidden meanings of the pieces, or into the artist's lives themselves, I am simply trying to enjoy the art for itself. In the case of Mondrian and Matisse, I have enjoyed their work and see it as more in the category of "design." I'm not sure if these waffly thoughts are making much sense to anyone - but basically, we have enjoyed having a go at replicating these artists' paintings or just using them as inspiration to have a go ourselves. We are also enjoying recognising Mondrian designs everywhere we go! Even my brother's new business cards are based on a Mondrian design!

Farbtafel, Paul Klee, 1930.

A couple of weeks ago we looked at the work of Paul Klee. As with a lot of artists, apart from Geninne Zlatkis's water colour inspired by Klee I had never heard of him before.

Paul Klee was a Swiss painter, of German nationality. His father was a music teacher, and his mother, a trained singer. Klee loved dabbling in the visual arts as a teenager and spent a lot of time drawing in his school books. He especially loved caricature. He earned a Fine Arts degree after which he travelled throughout Italy, studying the master painters and spending time with fellow contemporary artists, such as Kandinsky.

Rose Garden, Paul Klee, 1920.

Paul served with the German forces during World War 2, but with the intervention of his father, was kept from the front line. He ended up painting camouflage on war aircraft! He continued to paint and hold exhibitions during the war, and eventually settled in Switzerland.

Red Balloon, Paul Klee, 1922.

Klee struggled with colour, and many of his earlier paintings were black & white. This "long struggle with colour" was eventually overcome and Klee managed to produce over 9000 works. In his best year, 1939, he produced over 1200 works.

The painting below, Ad Parnassum (1932) is considered Klee's masterpiece and the best example of his pointillist style. I love it, it reminds me of a fine mosaic.

Ad Parnassum, Paul Klee, 1932.

The painting below is the one we based our art lesson on, although some of the girls chose to use ideas from some of his others. As with many of Klee's paintings, this one is based on building blocks. Doesn't it just remind you of those coloured wooden blocks you played with as a child? Klee also often added a sun to his paintings.

Castle and Sun, Paul Klee, date unknown.

Thanks to Kathy Barbro, of Art Projects for Kids for the idea for our lesson plan.

We had the girls use a set of plastic shapes to trace around and either "build" a castle or some other geometrical design. We traced over the lines with a dark coloured oil pastel or crayon, and then filled in the shapes with pastel or watercolour pencils. Here are the results:

Castle by one little friend, age 5.

Castle by another little friend, age 7.

The Landscape of Holland, Ainsley (7), 2009.

Shape City, Emily (9), 2009.

Block Castle, Bethany (11), 2009.

And to top off our last art afternoon for the year, we made these little "gingerbread houses" for afternoon tea:

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Starry Night

Last week for our Discovering Great Artists lesson, we learned about Vincent Van Gogh. We used his famous painting, Starry Night (above) to copy. We used either black or dark blue paper, some of the children made houses or other buildings with paper collage. We used oil pastels for the landscape and then added stars, moons, clouds and more blue sky with acrylic paints.

Here are the girls' paintings:

Bethany (11 yrs)

Ainsley (7 yrs)

Emily (9 yrs)

Ruby (3 yrs)

Below is another "starry night sky" painting by Van Gogh, it's called

"Starry Night over the Rhone"

I tried my hand at this night-time cafe scene,

"The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, at Night"

Check out this wonderful website, The Vincent van Gogh Gallery for a wonderful presentation of his paintings and much more.

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Matisse-inspired Collage Art

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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Mondrian Art

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.

Indulging Light Exhibition

A couple of weeks ago, I took the girls to see this exhibition:

The girls (grades 5-8, 9-12 years) from Carncot school had been to the Monet & the Impressionists Exhibition earlier in the year.

They also visited the Wellington Botanic Gardens to photograph water lilies to help them in their own artwork. The girls had studied the effects of light on the water lilies and used Monet's paintings as inspiration for their own beautiful paintings. The girls had started with charcoal & white paint, then progressed on to coloured pastel and oil paintings, all inspired by Monet's water lilies.

The paintings were absolutely beautiful and this was accentuated by the presentation. The paintings were hung in groups creating a striking display of all Monet's favourite colours - purples, pinks & blues. The coloured pastel water lilies were hung only at the top edge, so that they represented the ripples of the water.

The girls also made clay water lilies, which were lovely to look at in 3-D.

The girls had kept a scrapbook of the entire project, embellished with origami water lilies and full of beautiful ideas & commentaries on their art adventure. They had designed their own brochure and came up with the name for the exhibition.

We had missed the official public exhibition, but I rang the principal and she graciously arranged for us to come and view it.

I was so grateful to be able to visit this exhibition with my children, and it has certainly given me lots of new ideas for art and an even greater appreciation for Monet's paintings - and ultimately, God's amazing creation!

The Carncot girls had produced a calendar featuring their work. Here are some examples:

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