Mommio: Art Class- Impressionists- Renoir

This week's lesson on Impressionist artists focused on Pierre Auguste Renoir.

 Renoir was a French painter who was very much in demand during the late 1800's for his portrait paintings.  Many Impressionist artists had a hard time gaining recognition for their artwork, but Renoir overcame this problem with a charming personality.  He gained a reputation as having a friendly nature and wealthy people asked him to paint their portraits.  They were also drawn to his style of painting- the layering of quick and varied brush strokes to create soft lines and texture.  We looked more closely at three of his works and discussed the types of brush strokes and the use of layering colors that we saw in each painting.  First we looked at his self-portrait painted in 1875 (above).  Next we looked at Girls at the Piano (1892) and Head of a Dog (1870).

 We also watched a short youtube video gallery of Renoir's art and discussed which paintings the kids liked and why.  Thanks to Daddio we were able to watch it on the giant TV.

  Here's the Renoir virtual gallery- they seemed to like ALL of them.  They think Impressionism is pretty cool.

The assignment for today involved using our gouache paints and several different paint brushes to try out new brush strokes. We watched this tutorial on some basic strokes first.

Then the kids tried it out themselves.

 This was a very frustrating lesson for most of the kids- they are not used to me telling them how to paint and a few of them had problems feeling like they couldn't get it "perfect"- but afterward they realized they had done really well.  Here are some "S" strokes they made today using a flat brush and a round brush.

 Next they worked on making "comma" strokes with a round brush and thin lines with a liner brush.

 Finally, they practiced layering lighter colors of paint over darker colors with short brush strokes by painting a portrait of Franki. They created an impression of a dog by doing a quick outline sketch. 

Then they filled the shape in with paint, making sure it was opaque.

 After it dried they added short strokes of grey and white to create fur.  Here's our Franki!

 Avery REALLY loves this lesson and made several more paintings to practice her
brush strokes and layering.

 She even took some time to teach Kiki all about the lesson that she missed.

 Avery is officially the artist of the day!