Happy Birthday, Paul Cezanne! (On January 19th)

In honor of Cezanne's birthday, I thought I would REPOST a popular lesson from 2013 that is fun and easy and is appropriate for a wide range of students. The painting below is my youngest son's and was featured in the book "500 Kids Art Ideas" by Gavin Andrews published by Quarry Books. While this is a nice fall-inspired still life, you could change it to pears or lemons/limes for a more winter or spring theme. Either way, the results are fabulous and the lesson is chock-full of active learning.

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We are all into fall over here and I thought this week would be a nice time to do a still life with apples with my after school art class. This is the first time we've met this school year, and the group has 1st-4th graders in it. I had an idea of what I wanted to do, it's actually a combination of two lessons I saw out there:

My 1st grader's example with Cezanne's reproduction.
I can't show you the still life--he ate it!
(UPDATE: He's now in 3rd grade, but still eats still eats everything in sight!)

"Still Life With Oil Pastels and Baby Oil" (2 posts) from Fine Lines
http://kids-finelines.blogspot.com/2012/04/still-life-with-oil-pastels-and-baby.html
http://kids-finelines.blogspot.com/2012/04/oil-pastels-and-baby-oil-part-2.html

That was pretty much the lesson I used, but I modified my talk in the beginning to be about Paul Cezanne's work showing them "Still Life With Apples."

I then used the talk I found on That Artist Women: "Open vs. Closed Composition"
http://www.thatartistwoman.org/2011/09/open-vs-closed-composition.html

I really like how she shows real art examples in her post. I showed those to my kiddos as well.

Then I gave them time to experiment with arranging the apples (and one girl's donated pear) into closed and open compositions. There were three students to a table and the table needed to agree on a composition they liked best.

And then we were off! I walked them through drawing, demoed how to use the oil pastels and baby oil, and gave a quick watercolor demo.

These are their creations! Beautiful! They are so proud (me too!).

Enjoy!

FREE ART BOOK GIVEAWAY!

We all can use a little inspiration, can't we?

I have some WONDERFUL news to share: SIX art ideas of mine have been published in the book "500 Kids Art Ideas" by Gavin Andrews published by Quarry Books! 

This soft-cover book is chock-full of great ideas that will really get your creativity going! There are eleven different chapters in the book that show full color pictures of a variety of art media and projects created by a wide range of ages. There are great ideas for working in felts, fibers, paper and book art, sculpture and 3D, technology and more!

It truly is a beautiful book! Each of the 500 projects has a full color illustration along with a quick list of materials used. While there aren't step-by-step directions for each project, there's enough information to get you started and art teachers, homeschoolers and creative kiddos will be inspired none-the-less.

Author Gavin Andrews is an art educator and artist who is currently employed at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. I love what is written about her on Amazon (on the "About the Author" section for this book), "She is dedicated to the role of art and creativity in people's lives, especially those of her two children, and strives to have people understand that everyone can be creative." I couldn't agree with her more!

Want a copy? Well, I have one right here for you! I'm giving away a FREE copy of the book "500 Kids Art Ideas" by Gavin Andrews published by Quarry Books in my first-eva giveaway! Here are the details:

If you would like to be entered in the drawing to receive a copy of the book, leave a comment below with your name, email address and let me know what book YOU can't live without in your classroom or one that you've read that inspired you. 

I will choose a winner at random on August 31st, 2015. Sorry, only those in the continental United States are eligible for this giveaway.

So, get to writing that comment below to enter! Good luck!