We are super excited to be able to take part in the Art Center of Waco’s artist study series that they are currently putting on. Each Friday in September, October, and November they will be studying a new artist and the ladies that work at the Art Center are presenting a short lesson on the artist. This series is being called Cookies and Coloring. We have gone the last two weeks and the girls are loving it!
The first week was a study of Henri Matisse. There were a few pictures of some of the work that Matisse did. Meg Gilbert shared an article on their blog about Matisse and it highlights a good bit about the artist and the influences he experienced. In the lesson presented at the Art Center, this is where much of the presentation was taken from. It is a great introduction to the artist.
The Art Center ladies are creating a homeschool curriculum for art history, as well, and it is evolving from this series. The curriculum is titled Stella’s Scouts and you can find a new addition each week on their site. I can’t wait. The edition on Matisse is fantastic.
In addition to attending the presentation on Matisse and doing some coloring pages that were reproductions of his works, the girls viewed some more of his pieces on the computer by doing a search. (He did a lot of works that you might not want younger children viewing so preview this kind of a search.) On the Kindle, we have a book titled Twenty-Four Henri Matisse’s Paintings (Collection) for Kids
The girls also created a piece based on the paper cut-outs that Matisse did later in his life, after he was significantly less mobile and had lost strength. I think they had a lot of fun. J even chose to do hers to go along with The Giving Tree. I really like the way their pieces turned out.
Now that Stella’s Scouts has their Matisse lesson up, we may go back and do a little bit more. One of their projects looks like a lot of fun for the girls. Or we may move on to the artists we studies last Friday – Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.
At Home.
At Home 
[…] have learned a lot of techniques with that. (See three posts I have shared about the Art Center: Matisse, Art Camp, and Rendon/Chagall.) We have also used Artistic Pursuits several times and we do keep […]