Great Artists Study

The beginning of every summer starts with grand plans to immerse ourselves in fun topics we didn't have time to tackle during the school year.  But then summer happens, and the grand plans whittle down to something more realistic.

This year, what was realistic was a six-week Great Artists study for Aubree.  We recruited two other friends (and their moms), and each parent took two weeks (one afternoon a week) to teach about an artist (or two).

Meanwhile, the younger brothers of these three girls would go to another mom's house for a craft activity of their own.  The fact that Bryce got to participate in his own special thing might have been my favorite part of this whole endeavor.

I had the boys first.  Check out my car full o'boys:

I had Bryce look at my Pinterest kid-craft pages and choose things he thought looked really neat.  The first week, while Aubree was learning about Rembrandt, Bryce chose salt painting.  It was a hit!

The next week, he chose hot rock coloring.  The idea is that you heat the rocks in the oven, then the crayons just melt when they touch the rocks.  Easier said than done.  The rocks have to be really, really hot, and even then it was only semi-successful.

When it was my week to teach the girls, we studied Picasso.

The second week, we continued the Picasso theme, but looked more at his Blue and Rose periods, and tried to create our own colored pieces.

We talked about how Picasso's blue period pieces were all sad.  Initially, Aubree said the baby in her picture had died, but the other two girls insisted that was just too sad, so Aubree relented and said the baby was just very sick.

For her last week, Aubree learned about Andy Warhol and they did a really neat project.  Starting with this head-shot:

 Making a traceable drawing:

 And putting it onto a pillowcase:

All in all, it was a great experience.  Bryce and Aubree concur.