A Week of Famous Artists: Monet, Kandinsky, Picasso, & Pollack

This past week we rowed, "Mirette on the High Wire"-- a colorful book about a young girl, Mirette, who becomes captivated by Bellini's tightrope walking talent and wants so badly "to walk on air."  For the art portion, I thought about looking at the work of French Artist, Degas, because the story takes place in France. 
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I picked up the book, "Usborne Art Treasury" from our library with plans to learn of Degas, but after looking through it, I decided to change our plans!  The "Usborne Art Treasury" is a collection of paintings and projects from Artists all over the world.

The book gave a very short snippet of information about the artist, showed a piece of their artwork, and laid out directions for a project. 

In "Mirette" we learned that Bellini walked across Niagara Falls, tight-rope walked in Russia, France, Italy, and Spain.

In the art book, there are art projects for artist from Russia, France, Spain, and the United States... so I decided to do 4 days of Art, focusing on a different artist each day!  

Famous Artist Art Study

France-- Monet-- Layered Lilies

For the background, we substituted blue and purple tissue paper for white and added watercolor to it.  We could've just did without the tissue paper, but it gives it some dimension.

We used green tissue paper for the lily pads, and pink and white tissue for the flowers. 

Russia-- Kandinsky-- Color Contrast

Kandinsky's abstract circle art was also a lesson in Complimentary Colors-- note the top left square was the one I painted using green and red.


We folded our watercolor paper so there were six squares.  


Using crayons, T drew several circles.  


Finally, he used watercolor to paint the background.  I think it looks pretty comparable to Kandinsky's original piece ; )

United States-- Pollack-- Splatter Painting

This was probably the piece of art T should have painted outside!  The splatter did get on the walls a bit...  Oops!  Using watered down paint, T brushed the end of the paint brush to produce splatter marks!  I wanted a picture before the paint dried, hence the dripping paint!

Spain-- Picasso-- Clown Collage

The book told us that Picasso loved going to the circus; he used acrobats, clowns, etc. for many of his subjects.  Here we made a Clown Collage using different geometric shapes; we used different pieces of paper and even some felt.  T's clown is juggling on the high wire!  This was a very involved art project, but he had a good time picking out the paper and cutting out most of the shapes. 

The book has many more projects that look fun and engaging!   I enjoyed the book as it showed pictures of the original piece of art that the project is modeled after.  I had fun in Art class this week... I think T did too!

You can check out the rest of our week with Mirette here!

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