Mimicking Monet!

4th grade has moved onto art history to Impressionism and on from the Renaissance in art history! We talked about some of the main, big names of Impressionism such as Seurat, Van Gogh, Degas and one of Impressionism's founders, the one, the only Claude Monet! Did you know I love Monet's art so much I named my cat (she's a girl) Claudia Monet!? We watched Getting To Know the World's Greatest Artists video on Claude Monet. We learned he is famous for his lily pads in water, scenic views, garden scenes, and haystack studies that change with the weather and time of day. But, most importantly, Claude Monet is famous for his style of applying paint in his brush strokes. He used many tiny dabs of layered colors of paint to form his pictures. Your eyes does the mixing of the colors when you stand far away from it, because up close it just looks like a mess of dabs of paint!  

 We used some of Monet's most famous works as our muse when we mimicked his brushstrokes. We drew a quick outlined sketch with pencil and I had paint at different tables with Q-tips to make the 'dabs' of paint. We also talked about 'layering' the dabs of paint and making sure to throw away or use the other side of the Q tip to make sure you don't muddy up the clean paint stations. We just got started but I can't wait to see the final project!