More Vermeer

When I pulled this Venezia biography off the shelf my kids got very excited. They piled in close to me on the couch while I read aloud. They love all the biographies in this series but since they are so entranced by Vermeer at the moment they really got involved with subject.  I don't think this book filled in much that we didn't already know about Vermeer. The Chasing Vermeer book gives background on the artist, at least as much as is known about him. The two books did differ in the amount of children each claimed Vermeer had. One said 11 the other 15. I think I have read 15 from another source so I am going with that number. Other than this the essentials have all been the same. Mostly the kids just like to look at the paintings. So of course they had to break out the big book of Vermeer paintings again to look at their favorites.
They started to compare all the different paintings to find the repeating clothing and props in them.  I was going to do this for an assignment but I was happy they just did it on their own. I may still have them do some sort of writing assignment about his use of objects over and over again in his paintings.

While they were still engrossed in all things Vermeer I brought out some sketch paper and asked the kids to pick a painting to try to sketch. They thought Young Woman with a Water Pitcher looked easy enough. That is until they started to draw it.

Sophie's drawing of Young Woman with a Water Pitcher

All of a sudden they saw all the details. There were pains of glass in the window and the rug draped over the table and the map on the wall. I sat down and sketched with them for awhile and each tried their best to sketch this painting.

Henry's sketch

Ian's sketch

My sketch.

Sophie decided she wasn't done yet and wanted to do another drawing. She picked Girl with a Pearl Earring to attempt next. I encouraged her to add some color this time. We really need a decent set of colored pencils. I think I will have to ask Santa to bring us a few new sets of good colored pencils.

She loved how it turned out.  While she drew and colored, I added a little color to my sketch. The boys sat fascinated by my picture. They couldn't believe how "good" it looked.

 

I think the window turned out really nice but the rest is a little off. But then, I am my hardest critic. 

I am just happy my kids are enjoying some Art studies and especially glad they have kindled a love of Vermeer. He has always been one of my favorites.

Chasing Vermeer

We started a new audio book in the car a few days ago. I choose Chasing Vermeer to get us started on our study of Johannes Vermeer.  I didn't specifically tell the kids we were going to study Vermeer as our next artist I just put the audio book on and also picked up a large Vermeer book with all his paintings inside and had it sitting on the shelf waiting for them to discover it.
We have had a bit of driving around the last few days so we have gotten further into the book. As we were getting out of the car yesterday Henry asked me if Vermeer was real and if there really was a painting called Lady writing a letter.

We went inside and I showed him the big Vermeer book and we looked through the pictures to find the ones that the audio book mentioned. We found the Lady writing a letter and the Geographer which also was referred to in the book.

This is Ian's favorite one. He really wanted to find it in the book of paintings.

We aren't even close to finishing the audio book yet but we are already learning a lot about Vermeer. Hopefully I can squeeze in a little more art study into our day so we can do some fun projects like the ones on this Squido lens. I am happy with our start so far. I love it when a book introduces a topic for me. It draws my kids in so much better than if I just jump into something new and try to drag them with me.  So hopefully I will be able to share some fun things we do to learn more about Vermeer and his artwork.

Picasso Study

Our artist for the month is Picasso. I found a great book about Picasso at the library last week. Picasso and Minou is a fun picture book that introduces the painter and tells about his blue period and leads into his pink period. My kids loved sitting down and reading this book together. We have already read Venezia's biography of Picasso and it talked about the blue period and it showed us a few of the blue paintings but the Minou book really brought the reasons behind the paintings to life for them. They got it a little better after reading the picture book story.

We broke out our paints after reading the book and tried to make paintings using just one main color. My kids can't resist all the different colors so we ended up just having fun painting. While painting we discussed what emotions each color conveys. Sophie decided pink and red were very happy colors. Blue was a sad color. We differed in our opinions about green. I thought it was a cheerful color and Sophie thought it was a sort of quiet and sad. I guess it depends on what hue of green we are talking about. We agreed that most colors in the pure hue were much happier than if you mixed them with other colors.

Maybe next week we will get into the cubism style that Picasso is so famous for. But this week we enjoyed his blue and pink pictures.