Mommio: Art Class- Post Impressionists- Paul Cezanne

Today in our Artistic Pursuits lesson we learned about French Post Impressionist painter 

Paul Cezanne (1839-1906).

Cezanne studied under Monet and Pissarro but felt that he wanted to make objects in his painting more solid looking than the Impressionists quick paint strokes did.  He focused on the shape of objects and did not pay as much attention to the effects of light on the objects.  Because he liked to paint still, solid objects he focused on painting still life paintings and scenes in nature instead of people.  We watched this short video of his still life paintings and discussed what we saw.

Next we took a closer look at one of Cezanne's paintings, Still Life with Apples 1893-94, and answered some questions from the art lesson about the painting.

The kids have done still lifes before and some of them find it a little boring, so to make it more interesting we took a look at this video of a modern artists interpretation of a still life painting...that moves.  And we talked about how we could make our own creative, modern still life pieces interpretations.

We got out our gouache paints and talked a bit about Cezanne's use of color and focus on shades of brown.  The kids practiced mixing colors with brown to create a warm color palette.

Then they got to work painting their still life- a nice bowl of gourds and pumpkins from Nana's house.  The first step was to draw the outlines of objects on their paper in brown paint that has been diluted with water to make a lighter line.  Any mistakes can be quickly wiped off with a wet paper towel.

Finally, the kids filled in their papers with color to create a finished painting.