Monet Archives - Growing In Grace

Watercolor Water lilies

July 30, 2012Tracy

Continuing our study on Monet, we absolutely had to do something with water lilies. I’ve been brainstorming all summer and slowly the project came together in my head. Finally, I was ready, and on a warm summer day we tackled our watercolor water lily project.

First, we did a picture study from an online gallery. We talked about what the kids saw in the picture and what colors Monet used. We talked about our favorite parts of the picture, and then I showed them a photo of real water lilies. We talked about why Monet’s waterlilies looked blue and pink and purple instead of just green, and we discussed how light can change how we see colors.

Next, I had them go to the window and look out at our pond. What color was the water—not “what color is water supposed to be” but “what colors do you see?” Brown, green, blue, and white were the answers. We looked at Monet’s painting once more, at the colors that we saw in his “impression” of the water lilies. Then, we were ready for our project.

For the first step, I had them draw the lily pads and lily flowers in crayons. I encouraged them to layer their colors, as Monet had done, and to use many different colors. I also encouraged them to press hard with their crayons so that we got a good layer of wax on the paper. Once our lilies were ready, we headed outside for the actual painting.

Purple, blue, and green were the watercolors they could choose from. I helped get paint on the brushes and rinsed the brushes when a new color was needed; they did all the painting. And it was so cool to see our Monet paintings take shape.

Claude Monet

It was a very imprecise project; those are the kind of projects that Middlest really flourishes at. Oldest struggles with imprecision. He kept wanting to painstakingly paint around each lily pad, even after I assured him that the paint wouldn’t cover them. Eventually, he relaxed a little and let the brush sweep a little more freely. Middlest swept her brushes across wildly, mixing and layering colors and having a fabulous time creating.

The end result? A fun summer memory and an age-appropriate fine art project that really brought Monet to light!

Notebooking Fine Art

July 17, 2012Tracy2 Comments

I’ve been adding some lapbooking elements to our notebooking pages. It was exciting to see how much it spiced up just a plain piece of cardstock.

The main elements are from Confessions of a Homeschooler’s artist study, but I also added my own element from Homeschool Share’s free editable lapbooking templates (subscribe to their blog and get the templates for FREE!). I’ve mentioned how much I liked the “how to spot” information in the book Monet and the Impressionists for kids. So, I took the information from “how to spot a Monet” and “how to spot a Renoir” and typed it into this lapbooking template.

Oldest helped cut, Middlest helped paste, and they both had a blast working the artist puzzles.

I was thrilled to see how much my son remembered from last year’s Van Gogh study, even remembering the names to some of the art pieces, like the Potato Eaters. They especially enjoyed that piece, and I think both of them will forever remember Van Gogh and his “potato eaters.” For one, it’s such a great piece of art to bring up at the dinner table when someone complains about eating potatoes.

Monets and magazines

June 25, 2012Tracy3 Comments

For our Monet study this summer, I’m morphing two different resources: a free artist study download and the library book Monet and the Impressionists for kids. I loved this book for our Renoir study and could hardly wait to check it out for our Monet study, not just for the great biographical and art era information but also for the fun project ideas.

Though the text is a little above my kids’ attention spans, I love looking through the pictures with them and reading snippets from the longer story. Key facts and events about the artist, anecdotes that I think they will connect with and enjoy, as well as important art information is what I’m looking for. I also love that for each artist there is a box of “what to look for” that shares characteristics of the artist’s paintings. How do you spot a Monet? Look for light, water, gardens and waterlilies, and his wife and son who often show up in his paintings.

One of the project ideas suggested in this book was to choose a magazine picture of a landscape and paint over the picture, emphasizing the different shades of color more than the objects within the picture itself. It sounded like the perfect project for the kiddos, so I searched my old Better Homes and Gardens issues for just the right picture and then made a color copy so that both kids would have the same picture (for my own sanity).

Next, the kids donned their plastic garbage bag art aprons (I tear holes for the head and arms), and I prepared their paint palettes. We used some acrylic paints and some poster paints—the ones I had on hand (which meant that the flowers were not colored the exact shade of the photo). I did have to mix a few paints to get the right shades of green and yellow, and had I not run out of white paint, we probably could have matched the flower colors more closely.

All in all, I was pleasantly surprised by how well the kids did with the project, including Middlest. We talked through what colors to use where and used one color at a time before moving to the next color. I also had to instruct them to dab the paint onto the picture rather than sweep their brushes back and forth.