So for art over the last couple of months, we've been trying new media and techniques. We talked about Albrecht Durer, who we looked at when we studied the Medici family in history. One of his big things was woodcuttings for printing. The kids got to try using foam sheets to scratch a picture and then roll over it with ink and press a sheet of paper to make a print.
Olivia tried making two prints from one rolling. :)
Then we talked about Pieter Bruegel, who used bright colors to paint scenes of everyday life. We'd seen his work before as well. The kids used veggies to make various shapes on the page. The used slices of green peppers for the clouds, broccoli for bushes and the tops of the trees, corn cobs for tree trunks and logs and carrots for things like rocks and the sun.
After Bruegel, we learned about someone new: Giorlamo Francesco Maria Mazzola who became known as Parmigianino. He did a lot of work with distortion, like painting the view in a curved mirror or a spoon. The kids' projects were doing watercolor "lifts" which involved painting the background and then using more water and a paper towel to soak back up some of the blue paint to make clouds. Then they painted angels on them. :)
Finally, we tried our hand at blocking, which is painting over something on the page and then removing it. They did candles in darkness and it was pretty cool how they came out.
