Monday, 8 April 2013

Degas Art Lesson

The kids and I are continuing to use Meet the Masters for our art lesson.  As usual we read the book "The Greatest Artist -- Degas" by Mike Venzia to get some back ground information as well as watch the mini unit on the Meet Masters web site.

Degas is most famous for his portraits of ballet but is also loved going to the race track and painting pictures of horses.

The program gave us two choices for the art work to complete---either a ballerina

or a horse and jockey--both kids chose this picture to recreate

First we had to block out our paper with even squares to help recreate the drawing

It was recommended to complete the picture upside down as this helps with the brain to only observe the lines and not see the picture as a whole.

This is mine attempt at copying the ballerina, I was pretty pleased with it considering it is all done free hand just using the squares as my guide


At first the kids were very scared of this process and worried it wouldn't look right but with encouragement they gave it a try 

Once they completed the drawing we used chalk to color it in


after coloring the picture we went back and traced over the pencil lines with heavy black pencil. 
This is princess's version again I think she captured the original one great.

Little Mans piece turned out great and this is the  first advance drawing I have ever seen him do.  I only helped a teeny bit for the body.  



Here is my version of the picture

I also did the Ballerina although the children chose to pass on doing this one today.

This was the hardest assignment from this series so far but I have to say I was very impressed on how well the children did.  We are hoping to visit a museum very soon to see some of Degas' original works of arts in Paris.


11 comments:

  1. They all came out great! My favorite is your ballerina, but I am partial to Degas' ballerinas. Princess looks so grown up in that picture! Is it just the picture or did she get a haircut or is she just hitting puberty at super sonic speed right now? Gohan is hitting puberty at super sonic speed right now. In the last year, he had to start shaving, started getting acne, had his voice change, and grew about 6 inches such that he is now taller than me! I was looking at one of your older posts recently, I think the one when you did natural egg dyes??? And it really hit home how much both your kids have grown since I have been reading your blog. I am always so proud of my kids as they grow up, but then I always want to cry when I look at pictures of them when they were little...

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    1. Kids grow up so fast, when I look back on their pictures I get teary eyed. I want them to grow up and everything but I also want them to stay babies a little longer too.

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  2. I was a ballet dancer so of course love Degas dancers. Great work. Now I blog about Australian History and found you through NOBH>

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    1. Thanks for stopping by. I would love one day to go to Australia for a visit.

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  3. We just saw the dancer bronze statue at the St. Louis Art. It is very cool. One of Lydia's favorite pieces.

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    1. I didn't know the ballet statue was in St Louis...we will definitely go see it this summer/fall. It is one of my favorite works of his too.

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  4. Absolutely wonderful lesson! (We love Venezia as well)
    I am planning on revisiting van Gogh this week! :)

    Thanks for sharing...I don't know the series MTM..Will check that out.

    Have a great day!

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    1. Oh Van Gogh is fun to do too. We had the amazing experience and privilege to go to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam and it was amazing!!!

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  5. I LOVE these! I am pinning this post for future reference! :)

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  6. Found you on a home school forum about art lessons, excited to check out your blog! :) Just wanted to say hi!

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  7. how do you get the program to draw the photoa?

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