Berthe Morisot was successful in her own lifetime, both prior to joining the Impressionist movement and afterwards. She painted scenes from her everyday life as a fairly wealthy woman, giving us snap shots of the culture at that time. She liked to use very thick paint. This gave her paintings a slightly three-dimensional aspect and…
“Plein-air” is French for “open air.” (“plein” is pronounced like “plain.”) So plein-air painting simply mean going outside to paint. “Plein-air” is a funny little phrase I thought no one used anymore until I learned what it meant a while back. Now, I hear people, mostly artists, using it all the time. I don’t know if…
While Degas was considered an impressionist, he really didn’t act like it. While most of the impressionists were doing their plain-air thing, Degas was sketching ballet dancers as they practiced or translating his sketches into paintings inside his studio. He just wasn’t one of those landscape kinda guys. However, he become a master at sketching…
I don’t know about you, but I really treasure the few photos we’ve had taken by professionals photographers. Family photography is an art all it’s own and I have a lot of respect for it. But what did people do before cameras had been invented? They hired artists to paint a portrait, or course! Gainsborough…
Carl Linnaeus was a botanist before botany was a thing. He created the base of our modern classification system for living things. So, he is known as the “Father of Taxonomy.” As part of this naming endeavor, he would create scientifically accurate drawings of plants. The drawings would include all the plant parts: roots, stems, leaves, flowers, seed…
In Classical Conversations we spend six weeks studying amazing artists and doing fun art projects to help us remember those artists. This takes place in the third quarter of our fine arts program. So, in week 13 of cycle 2, we’ll be studying Rembrandt. Rembrandt was famous for all the people he drew and painted….
Update: Cycle 3 Lesson Plans are now available! Check out what we’re doing for Rockwell, Moses, O’Keeffe, Wyeth, Lichtenstein, and Davis! I’m so excited to begin the 3rd quarter of fine arts, when we get to study the Baroque, Classical and Romantic period artists. In my opinion, these are the best time periods. However, our…
Our Classical Conversations Community just did week 4 of cycle 2, which has the nominative pronouns. This reminded me of how last time we did cycle 2 were got pretty confused by week 8, trying to remember which pronouns where nominative, which were objective, etc… so I made little graphic and hung it up in our homeschool…
I’ve found that our family does a great job of memorizing anything that I have on a cute little flashcards. We carry these flashcards everywhere and review them over meals, while waiting in line anywhere, in front of grandparents, etc. I’ve also found that if I don’t have it on a flashcard, we really…
I’m a big fan of NOT reinventing the wheel. So, of course I looked everywhere for a written out list of hand motions for Ephesians 6 since we’re memorizing it this year. Maybe I just didn’t look in the right places, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. So, I set out creating my own. However,…
I’m so excited for the first six weeks of Classical Conversations when we get to focus on drawing during Fine Arts. In this post I’ll be showing you the six simple projects we’ll be doing for these six weeks. I love getting to share these projects so much. If you have any questions, please comment below since…
