Art appreciation - Mary Cassatt - one

 Our Art appreciation group has started up again this year, we have a new member, so 6 boys in total...a happy, lively, lovely bunch!

Before we begun our artist study, we started with a fun project and a bit of a refresher on colour theory 

...the boys each created a colour wheel pizza.

Colour wheel Pizza toppings

I gave them each a circle of white card board, they had to divide it into 6 segments - some needed a little help...

They then coloured each segment in the correct colour - first the 3 primary colours - 

red, blue and yellow...

then the secondary colours in between...

 purple, green and orange.

We used oil pastels for this.

Once completed they then had to decorate their pizza with colour coded toppings (pompoms, stickers, foam shapes, foam letters, pipe cleaners, sparkle shapes etc)...lots of fun...

Look at their brightly coloured pizza's...Wonderful!

We then started with our featured artist for this term -  American Impressionist and woman artist...Mary Cassatt.

self portrait 1878

 We read a brief biography of her and looked at some of her paintings (in books and online).

Lots of talking and sharing happens at this time... 

We also watched a youtube clip.

We learnt that she was passionate about the intimate bond between Mother and child, and was often referred to as 'The artist of mother and children'. 

She worked alot in pastels, a skill taught to her by her good friend Edgar Degas.

For this lesson instead of coping one of her works, I wanted to make the connection with the artist more personal...give the boys some freedom...

So the project for the morning, done with pastels on pastel paper was to create a special memory or time that each of the boys shared with their moms.

Create an artwork of Mother and child...

Each work has a special story to tell...Well done Boys!!

I sent each student home with a project to colour in their own time - The Boating Party

The Boating Party 1893 - 1894