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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1. My favourite colour is purple

2. I LOVE licorice, especially allsorts and RJ's Natural Licorice.

3. I nearly finished a Bachelor of Science Degree, majoring in Zoology.

Maybe one day I'll finish it...

4. I am the oldest of 6 children (3 boys and 3 girls)

5. I have lived in 16 different homes, 7 before I was married, and 9 after.

6. I have passed grade 7 practical piano, thanks to my parents providing me

with lessons and encouraging me to practice every day. I love that I can

now sit down and play a piece for pleasure.

7. I never play piano in church because I get too nervous.

8. I lived in Australia for four years.

9. I rode a camel in Adelaide, South Australia.

10. I love diagramming sentences.

11. I am scared of spiders, but I have held a giant weta.

12. I have only been to the South Island of New Zealand once, to a

youth camp.

13. I cannot figure out why homeschoolblogger doesn't let me space between lines on my blogposts when I change the font...

Thanks Jeanne, at A Peaceful Day, for nominating me with this award:

Here are the rules:

1. Thank the person who gave this to you

2. Copy the logo and place it on your blog

3. Link the person who nominated you

4. Name 7 things about yourself no-one would really know (see above)

5. Nominate 7 other bloggers and let them know they are nominated...

I nominate:

1. Dana at School for Us

2. Barb at Harmony Art Mom

3. Keri at Sunny Scholars

4. Jimmie at Jimmie's Collage

5. Tisha at Art with Mrs Smith

6. Sarah at The Forest Room

7. Renae at Life Nurturing Education

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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.

Gutenberg's Printing Press

Today in Story of the World, we learned about the beginning of the Renaissance, and how Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press.

Here us a Youtube video explaining how the printing press worked:

Demonstrating the Gutenberg Printing Press

This is a post by Jeanne at A Peaceful Day about a beautiful pop-up story book of Gutenberg.

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Bethany's Narration:

Johannes Gutenberg made a printing press from an old winepress. He stamped the letterblock with ink made from soot and linseed oil, and put it in a type of folder. Then he turned a wheel and a lever to flatten it, squeezing the paper and the block together. Then he turned the wheel back to push the folder back and took the paper out. On it would be printed the words that were on the letterblock.

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Emily's Narration:

His printing press worked like this: taking raw cow hide leather he soaked it in cow wee overnight then rinsed it by hand. Then using ink made of linseed oil and soot, and a roller, he rolled the ink onto the leather. (This refers to the "pounders" he used to pound the ink onto the letterblock).

Next he carefully placed a piece of paper in a folder-like thing called a frisket. He placed the inked leather on his machine. He then rolled the frisket with the paper in it over the leather and turned a lever to press the ink onto the paper.

On the youtube video the man demonstrating printed a page of the Gutenberg Bible. It had a space left for when it got illuminated and illustrated. For Monks writing book by hand it would take years to print the entire Gutenberg Bible. Johannes Gutenberg and twenty helpers printed 450 Bibles in one year. The very first book he printed was the Gutenberg Bible.

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Gutenberg is credited with printing the first Bible. He also printed paper indulgences, sold by the Roman Catholic church to pardon the buyer from of his sins. This is what sparked Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses, which where 95 reasons why the church should not sell indulgences. Luther had studied the book of Romans which convinced him that God promises forgiveness to all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ as their Saviour.

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Here is a picture of a page from one of Gutenberg's Bibles:

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Gutenbergprinted the text, leaving a blank space for the illumination of the first letters of a chapter. The illumination and decoration was completed by monks.

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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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Pukaha Mt. Bruce

A few weeks ago we visited Pukaha Mt. Bruce with my sister, her husband and their two little boys. Pukaha Mt. Bruce is a Department of Conservation reserve, specifically set up for the purpose of captive breeding in order to preserve the kiwi, our most popular native bird. The reserve also looks after other native birds and houses the elusive tuatara.

It was difficult to take pictures of the birds as they were amongst bush and too far away, but I will show you some pictures we did get.

These are not birds (obviously!) but the children all found the eel feeding interesting. These NZ native long fin eels swim all the way to Pacific waters near Tonga to spawn. The larvae return to NZ in the ocean currents. They only breed once in their lifetime and are considered to be a threatened species.

Undoubtedly, the highlight of our day was the Kaka feeding. The kaka are a cheeky native bird and are lots of fun to watch at feeding time.
They were fed a spread of jam-water, fruit, nuts, veges and seeds. The kaka know to come to the feeding area at 3 pm each day. We arrived there just before that, and not long after between 30 and 40 kaka came swooping into the feeding green from the trees around us. They would swoop right across our heads into the feeding stations.
The kaka are known as the "clowns of the forest" as they bicker over their food and tumble through the trees, hanging from their feet or bills. They were lots of fun!

A kaka nesting box.

The Takahe are a funny looking bird. They have beautiful bright coloured feathers and came out for viewing this day!

There are less than 200 of these flightless birds left in New Zealand.

These little New Zealand natives are also quite cheeky, and love to spend their lunchtimes rolling down hills ;-)

I must give credit to Bethany for most of these photos.

Travelling the Silk Road

This morning we had another History lesson, which hasn't happened in a long time! Our dear friends with whom we used to get together for History and IEW lessons have packed up and moved to North Dakota, where my friend is originally from. We will miss them dearly, but we will carry on alone, sniff sniff! We are using Story of the World Volume 2: The Middle Ages. Today's lesson was about Marco Polo, the explorer to China who travelled the Silk Road along with his father, Niccolo.

So, don your paper bag Chinese hat and come along with us:

First up, we must pass through the hot and treacherous Taklamakan Desert:

We'll stop for a rest on a comfy chair and enjoy a snack at the oasis of Tun-huang-shih:

We must now pass south of another desert, the Gobi Desert:

The Gobi Desert is not so treacherous, it has some oases along the way, so let's stop and have a glass of water.

We'll take a rest and have another snack at Loyang-shih.

Now we'll take the Yellow River to Peking:

In Peking, we can trade for Chinese goods:

and visit the Emporer, Kublai Khan in his palace:

Here we will find gold, ivory, silk and exotic animals.

We'll relax here and then return home to Italy.

It'll take us about four years ;-)

Hope you enjoyed the journey with us. Thanks Susan Wise Bauer, we are loving the Story of the World!

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