L13 is currently working her way through a simple study of the great artists. She studies one artist per week and her goal is to learn one new technique with each study. Recently, she studied Norman Rockwell using the excellent and free art lessons from Concordia University:
The lesson, which I downloaded and printed out for her, is only two pages long. L usually reads the lesson and we go through the questions together. The first page focuses on the history of the artist:
whilst the second page focuses on the actual piece of art being studied, in this case ‘Commuters’, along with lots of questions which guide the student to a greater appreciation of the painting:
Although there are many suggestions for art activities at the end of the second page, they are geared towards Grade 1, so L and I often come up with our own alternatives. This time she and I looked at other Rockwell paintings and came up with a very cute one called ‘A Scholarly Pace’:
She really liked the simplistic nature of this painting and decided to attempt to replicate it:
I really liked this painting of L’s because I can see her own style clearly, even though it is a copy. She often doodles characters and fairies all over scrap pieces of paper and they are all in a similar style to this:
And a close up of the children:
Rockwell painted his ‘Scholarly Pace’ in acrylic, which L used also. This was her first time using acrylic paints to paint a picture (as opposed to using it within the context of mixed media which she loves). She wasn’t overly keen on this medium, although I think she was happy enough with the result. As I said above, I loved it, because L’s natural style of painting showed through and I kind of like her style 🙂