Monet's waterlilies pond

 You need:

1. drawing paper A3 size
2. tempera paint in green, blue, white, red and yellow
3. two brushes per student
4. two spunges per student
5. paper towels
6. oil pastel crayons 
7. schotels  

Claude Monet (1840-1926) is considered one of the most important painters of Impressionism. 

 Typical for Impressionists:

• they choose subjects from ordinary life 
• special attention for light and color
• work in the open air
• smooth brushstrokes
• dashes resemble a sketch
• it's about the impression!

Discuss the term impressionism. Show some paintings by Monet and zoom in on a work with water lilies in Arts & Culture. Do students see the characteristics of impressionism in this artwork?

Monet had a large garden with a pond and a Japanese bridge in Giverny France. He liked to paint in that garden. His works of water lilies are therefore famous and are the basis of this lesson.

Lesson 1

Squeeze some blue, green and white paint onto a saucer. Dipt your sponge into the blue paint. Stamp on the sheet. Do the same with green paint and stamp all over the sheet. Finally do this with white paint. You can use the green side of your sponge,  to get a light green color also. Let the work dry.

Lesson 2

To paint the water lilies: mix a little bit of red with white paint. Paint ovals spread across the sheet. Not too neat, it's all about impression!

Paint a green border at the bottom of the ovals: the leaf. To make it fresher, you can mix some light green paint and use it. You don't have to clean the green brush first. 

Then paint a heart in your flower with yellow. Let the work dry. 

Finally draw lines in your lily with a dark red or purple oil pastel: the petals. 

Artworks made by students of grade 1 and 2.

Mexican amate

You need:

1. brown paper bag
2. tempera paint in fluoresecent colours and white
3. brushes
4. jar with water
5. black marker
6. coloured paper for background
7. glue or stapler

Amate is a way of making paper, done for centuries by Mexican Indians. Amate paper is made by cooking the inner bark of various trees. At the beginning of the 20th century the Nahua Indians of Mexico started making amate paintings as a form of folk art, especially in order to exchange and sell them to tourists.

Show some pictures of Mexican amate paintings. Discuss the features: birds, flowers, bright colours and black outlines. A frame around the drawing with a pattern in bright colours too.

Tear the edges off the paper: use thumb and fingers of both hands and tear slowly. Use a pencil to draw some birds and flowers, add a patterned frame and paint everything with fluorescent tempera. Let dry and outline everything with a black marker. 

Paste or staple the artworks on coloured construction paper.

Tamponing an Easter bunny

 You need:

1. colored paper
2. tamponing brushes 
3. white tempera paint
4. pencil and color pencils  

A lesson to learn the technique of tamponing with a tamponing brush: do not move the brush back and forth, but stamp. Result will be a softer texture than when using normal brushes.  

No tamponing brushes in school? Give students a cotton ball in a cloth spin. 

What to do?

Scetch the outline of an Easter bunny. Press the pencil as gently as you can, to avoid thick pencil lines under the white paint. 

Stamp the bunny and let dry. 

Draw the outlines with a blak pencil. 

Draw small lines all around with a black pencil. 

Decorate the artwork with spring flowers. 

Art work made by students of grade 2.

Pretty tulip prints

 

You need:

1. corrugated cardboard or a cardboard box 
2. scissors
3. roller 
4. blockprint or tempera paint* 
5. colored or white sheets 

* blockprint dries more slowly and therefore works better than tempera paint. 

With cardboard boxes you can make beautiful prints. These tulips are cut from a cardboard box. 

roll in with block print

Cut a simple tulip from cardboard. Roll them in different colors and print several times on a sheet. Experiment with colors on top of each other and wet in wet. Print the tulips in several heights and let them overlap for a spatial effect. Let dry and stick the art work on a colored sheet. 

Elements of art: space, color, texture. 

Mix and match with Mondrian

 by students of grade 3

You need:

1. white sheets 21 by 21 cm
2. black sheet 23 bij cm
3. paper strips 3 by 6 cm in yellow, red and blue
4. black squares 3 by 3 cm
5. glue

Discuss life and work of Mondrian and the art movement De Stijl.  

I did this lesson in grade 5, students worked in  pairs. The figures are cut  before class. Per art work you need 4 black squares and 16 colored rectangles 

The assignment is:  

• make a composition of 4 squares, each consisting of 4 colored rectangles and a black square in the middle. Make sure there are no 2 of the same colors next to each other
• paste the composition on the white sheet, keeping a small white edge visible around each shape. 
• finally paste the art work on a black surface 

Students from higher groups can measure and cut the figures themselves. 

Difficult assigment and not everyone succeeded! 

Elements of art: shape, color, line.