Our Homeschool Co-op Art Exhibit

Last week we wrapped up our final Spring quarter of co-op with our homeschool group.  It was a lot of fun!  And it was my first time to be lead teacher in a co-op class.  I really enjoyed it, but I certainly couldn't have done it without the help of the other moms.  

I taught an Art Appreciation class, but we also did art projects in the styles of the artists we studied.  Finally, we had an art exhibit to show off the great work the students did.  And they really did do a great job!  Each week was something new and we all had fun learning together.  

Not being an artist myself, I gathered project ideas from books and the web.  Thanks to projects I gathered on my Pinterest art board, plus some great books, I found some really cool ones!  I just had to show off the students' work to you all, too.

Gallery 1: Impressionism

We studied Monet and his style 

and did a couple of different projects in his style.

The youngest students (1st & 2nd grades)used watercolor pencils to color a line drawing of one of his paintings and then *painted* over them with water to produce the watercolor effect.  

(Mr. B's Monet-style painting)

For grades 3 and up, I color-copied photographs 

that were good representations of  Monet's paintings 

and we used a small brush-stroke technique to paint on top 

of the photograph and turn it into a painting.  

This was a really fun project and

the students did some great work on these!

(The Princess' Monet-style painting)

Gallery 2: Post-Impressionism

For this week we discussed Van Gogh and his style.  

Our project was to draw and paint something--

flowers, a plant, etc.--in a vase.  The students were very 

creative, as you can see, and created some beautiful art.  

(The Princess' painting of flowers in a vase)

(Mr. B's painting of flowers in a vase)

Gallery 3: Expressionism

Next we learned about Kandinsky and his style of modern art.  

The students got to *play* with oil pastels for their projects 

and created some very cool modern art using 

the pastels on construction paper.  

(Mr. B's expressionist drawing)

(The Princess' expressionist drawing)

Gallery 4: Cubism

You can probably tell that we learned about Picasso and his very creative

style on this lesson.  The students brought all kinds of pictures of 

faces torn from magazines and catalogs, 

then we cut them up and mixed up all of the facial features 

to create cubist-style collages.  The kids really had fun with this project!

(Mr. B's cubist-style collage)

(The Princess' collection of cubist-style ladies)

Gallery 5: American Modernism

Our final artist for this class was O'Keeffe.  

We chose to do a large, off-the-page, 

watercolor flower for this project. 

 I let the students choose either watercolors or

watercolor pencils for their pictures.  

I loved how these turned out!

(The Princess' watercolor flower)

(Mr. B's watercolor flower)

This really was an awesome class!  And I've already thought of several more artists that would be fun to do....so maybe there will be another in the fall.  I guess I'd better start gathering ideas!