Mommio: Art Class- Vermeer

This week in art class we are using out Artistic Pursuits curriculum to study Johannes Vermeer who was a Dutch artist during the Baroque Period that lived from 1632-1675.

 Vermeer's father was an innkeeper and art dealer, so Vermeer grew up watching people come and go in his home and seeing wonderful works of art rotate through the inn.  This artwork is what inspired him to become a painter and life at the inn (which he later owned with his wife) was the inspiration for his painting.

  Vermeer only has 36 known paintings and they are all very much like each other.  He used themes over and over throughout his paintings.  In class we used venn diagrams to compare two of his works and find the things that they have in common (an idea I found here).  The kids paired up to do this.  

Here they are working hard-

 And here is an example of what they were doing.  This one was done by Connor and Marney.

 

Next we used a great art lesson I found here to create our own Vermeer themed art.  I gave the kids a list of things that they would have to include in their painting, these are all things found in most of 

Vermeer's 36 pieces of art.

*a window on the left

*jewelry

*the color blue

*an indoor scene

*one or more people in the scene

*a map

*a diamond pattern

They drew their picture on watercolor paper with regular pencil, making sure to include all seven themes.

 Next they outlined their pencil lines with a black sharpie marker.

 Then they filled in their picture using oil pastels and remembering to add blue somewhere.

 To finish off their pictures and make more of an oil painting appearance they dipped q-tips in baby oil and rubbed it over each color.  This smoothed the lines out and made the colors glossy.

 Here are their finished Vermeer themed paintings.  Beautiful!

 We are also reading a book this week called Chasing Vermeer, a mystery involving some middle school kids and a missing painting.

Next week we will continue with Vermeer and learn a new printing technique that can be used to create some of the patterns found in his paintings.  The kids will also do another themed painting on their own so that we can add to our Vermeer series.