Mommio: Art Class- Impressionists: Art and the Subject

This week we moved on to the next book in the Artistic Pursuits series. 

We have studied prehistoric art, ancient art, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.  In this book we will look at Modern Art, beginning with the Impressionists.  Today we looked at how the subject matter has changed over time. In the art we were studying last, the subject was usually biblical and was painted with very fancy clothing and elaborate backgrounds.  Rich people would even have artists paint their own faces into biblical scences, like the Sassetti family did in 1485 in this painting.

 Nativity
Domenico Ghirlandaio, 1485
In contrast, beginning in the 1800's the Impressionist artists were more interested in painting what they saw around them in their modern lives as it actually was.  People were no longer all portrayed as wealthy and happy.  We took a look at this painting of a girl working at a theater.

 A Bar at the Folies-Bergere
Edouard Manet, 1881
And the skies were not always sunny and full of angels, as we saw in this painting of an ordinary rainy day on a Paris street.

 Paris, the Place de l'Europe on a Rainy Day
Gustave Caillebotte
For our project today we learned how to use gouache paints (pronounced "gwash" like "squash").  Gouache paints are opaque water color paints that come in cakes or tubes and are used like watercolors, but lighter colors can be applied on top of darker colors.  Here is what ours look like.

 The kids were excited to get new supplies and they love all the colors!
To practice using and mixing the paints we made color wheels today.  First the kids painted the three primary colors, leaving space in between on the wheel.

 Next they practiced mixing the primary colors to fill in the spaces our their wheels.

For the center circle they mixed all three colors together to get brown.

 Over the next week they will be practicing with the gouache paints by doing more mixing and creating some color palettes.  Next week we look at some work by Monet to learn about the use of light.