Picture Study: Inspired by Marc Chagall

This post has been updated and may be found here:

Marc Chagall - Charlotte Mason Style Art Appreciation

A Charlotte Mason Picture Study Resource

Here is Part 2 of the Australian Artist Picture Study featuring the work of Tom Roberts. I've concentrated mostly on his portraits this time. For a short biography of his life see Part 1.
Download the PDF for Part 2 here. I hope you find this helpful and if you find any errors or have difficulty downloading it please let me know.

‘By making art the perfect expression of one time and one place, it becomes art for all time

 and of all places.’

Tom Roberts (1856-1931)

Free Picture Study Resource: Tom Roberts - Part 1

Australian artists tend to be neglected, partly because there isn't anywhere near as much information about them compared to artists from other parts of the world. I put this guide together for those who would like to explore some great works by an Australian artist who made an important contribution to the art world. Tom Roberts painted some iconic works that showpiece the Australian landscape but he also was an excellent portraitist. This resource has two parts. In this first part, I've included mostly landscapes but in Part 2 I'll include mostly portraits.
This is a simple guide and it's also the first time I've done anything like this. Hopefully you will be able to download it without any problems. If there are any, please let me know in the comments and I will try to fix them. If you enjoy it, let me know, too!

Download PDF to view this:

Review of The Art of Poetry: Classical Academic Press

My daughter turned 14 years of age earlier this year and as with many students in the high school years, her days are very full. Besides her lessons at home, she is studying the cello at a level which requires about 6 hours of practice per week and she swims in a competition squad for 8 hours a week. From what I've observed, many other home educated children are in similar circumstances with a variety of similar or other commitments.

So why include the study Poetry? What use is it? Isn't it one of those 'enrichment' subjects that aren't really necessary; just a fancy add on and reserved for those kids who are into that type of thing? 

Something to consider:

'…your days are long and crammed with obligation and information and technology. You are at risk for thinking that this is knowledge. Poetic knowledge insists that beauty and truth can’t be separated. It reminds us that the rational alone will not take us to full knowledge and that we should be astonished by what is true.'

The Art of Poetry is a Poetry Curriculum but what it also does admirably is to give a beautifully articulated defence for the need of poetry in our lives, no matter what our age.

‘Poetry acknowledges something deep within our nature...’

This curriculum was written for students in the 7th to 10th Grade and includes an anthology of 39 poems from well-known and lesser known poets.
There are 16 Chapters each having a short anthology of poems with a variety of discussions questions, followed by an activity section and quiz at the end of the chapter. The activity section has a wide scope of options for students. My daughter loves drawing and enjoyed some of the more creative ideas for mixing poetry with art. Students who prefer writing, reciting, or acting, will also find plenty of ideas here.

There are three main sections in the text:

1) Elements of Poetry - eight chapters discussing Images, Metaphor, Symbols, Word, Sound, Rhythm, Shape, and Tone.

2) The Formal History of Poetry - seven chapters covering  the History of Form, Verse Forms, Shaping Forms, A Case Study in Form, Open Verse, A Case Study in Open Verse, and Narrative Poems.

3) Application - a section on growing your interest in poetry with suggestions such as starting a poetry group, finding mentors, and a range of other ideas.

Three Apendices include short biographies of the poets covered in The Art of Poetry; planning ideas, a glossary of terms, bibliography, timeline, and quizzes.

A few timetable options are suggested: an intense month long unit; spreading the curriculum out over the year - two sections per month; or expanding it out over several years.

‘Poetry fundamentally changes our relationship to language - we can no longer see words

 as merely serviceable vehicles.’

The complete curriculum for The Art of Poetry includes a Student Text, a Teacher’s Edition, and a set of 7 DVD’s with over 15 hours of material.

The DVD’s aren’t essential but I found them helpful and Miss 14 enjoyed the discussions between Christine Perrin and her four students. The students were of a similar age to my girl, and the banter between them added a nice dynamic.

At the beginning of each chapter, the author reads from sections of the text and then has a group discussion. At the end of this, she chooses one or two of the activities and demonstrates it.

One of our favourites was a free writing exercise. I thought I knew what this meant but as the author talked through it and then went ahead and modelled it, I realised I didn’t! For five minutes we wrote about images from one of the four seasons - no planning, just writing anything that came to our minds during that time, without stopping. I was pleasantly surprised with both of our efforts. This is a great exercise for those who tend to overthink things or get mental blocks when faced with a blank page.

Other activities included:

An exercise in Ekphrasis - a poem written in response to a visual piece of art. Moozle observed Pieter Bruegel's work, The Land of Cockaigne, and wrote this in response to it:

From the section on Metaphors:

‘Draw a picture of the bird of hope as you imagine it from Dickinson’s poem...

Will you ever see a bird now without considering the way in which its miraculous wings defy gravity and lift into the air? This is how poetry begins to live with us each day and in the scenes we encounter.’

Moozle chose to draw a blue wren, a tiny, beautiful, Australian native bird, as a metaphor for hope:

'Poetry remind us that the metaphor is the basic way of knowing the unknown and that we often describe one thing in terms of another. Poetry gives us images to cherish and to invigorate 

our daily experience.'

If you were planning to use the course with a group or needed some guidance in how to teach poetry in general, the DVD's would be a good resource. Or if like me you're using the curriculum with only one student, seeing other kids getting involved in a poetry discussion helps facilitate your own. 

The Teacher’s Edition includes the text from the Student Edition along with suggestions for discussion questions, answers to discussion questions for the poems, and answers to quizzes. It is arranged in such a way that you could use the Teacher’s Edition for the Student as the discussion answer guides are found tucked away at the end of the chapters.

The answers to the quizzes are sometimes on the opposite page so you could either cover them up or give the questions orally.

The Student Edition has the same content as the Teacher’s Edition minus the answer keys.

'Educating the imagination is an important aspect of studying poems.'

Pros

* A good variety of poems are studied
* The chapter introductions are just beautifully written (the quotations in this post were taken from the text)
* There is an emphasis on reciting and memorisation
* The activities have a mixture of analytical and creative suggestions
* The course is taught by a poet who obviously loves her subject
* It is very adaptable and could also be used for Mother Culture!

Cons

* There is so much content in this curriculum that it could overwhelm at first sight. In fact, the author specifically says in her introduction not to let it do this.

* Depending on the student, they may not be ready for the more analytical aspects of the curriculum.
If a student hasn't had much exposure to poetry before, I'd concentrate more on appreciating the various poems the author presents, reading them aloud, and covering the section 'The Elements of Poetry.'

The author reminds us that poetry can communicate before it is understood. Keeping that in mind takes the pressure off so that we can enjoy studying aspects of poetry and return to a lesson later on to look at it in a more analytical way. 
Appendix C has a simplified plan on Page 252 that summarize some practices to help initiate you into the world of poetry. 

For those following a Charlotte Mason method of education, I'm using this in Year 9 of Ambleside Online.

'…Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; 

for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.'

 T.S. Eliot

Classical Academic Press kindly provided me with a free copy of The Art of Poetry Curriculum for review purposes and what I wrote above is my honest opinion.
They are also offering a 20% discount for the Art of Poetry Program (discount won’t apply to individual texts). Discount code “AOP2019” can be applied at checkout for the 20% off. 
The discount will run through until the 31st May 2019.



For further information:

Art of Poetry samples at Classical Academic Press

http://artofpoetry.us/

On Being an Initiator

The other month I wrote about bringing our children into ‘a large room’ where the doors are open to a wide and generous curriculum. In School Education, Pg 170, Charlotte Mason points out that we have a responsibility to our children to ‘...initiate an immense number of interests.’

The idea of being an initiator was sparked in me years ago during a time of disappointment. A wise friend who knew my situation said some words to me at the time that I’ve never forgotten: 'Not many people are initiators.' I’ve found that to be generally true, unfortunately, so it made sense to me that Charlotte Mason addressed this in the context of education.
I decided to check out what the word ‘initiate’ implies.

The dictionary says that to initiate means to:

Begin
To do the first act
Invest
Pioneer
Originate
Break the ice
Get the ball rolling
Set in motion

So when Charlotte Mason states that we owe it to our children to initiate an immense number of interests, she means that we are responsible for the initial action. We get the ball rolling and do some investing. We don’t leave it to the child to do the initiating. Not that we shouldn't allow them their own interests, but when it comes to educational philosophy and direction, the responsibility is ours. Unless, of course, you believe in child-led education, which Charlotte Mason didn't espouse and neither do I.

A Practical Example

We’ve been doing Picture Study in our home for twenty-odd years - that is, we pick an artist and study about six of his/her paintings a term. It’s very simple. We just look at the picture and later we might describe it or draw a sketch of what we remember of its composition, the emphasis being on observing and appreciating the artist’s work.
If I know something of the artist’s life or have a short biography (the boys really liked the Mike Venezia books when they were younger) they might read that.

Charlotte Mason made this observation:

...I know that you may bring a horse to the water but you can't make him drink. What I complain of is that we do not bring our horse to the water. 

I initiated the introduction to the world of art, led them to the water, and they gained an appreciation of great art. That was important to me and I love how the Charlotte Mason method doesn’t consider the study of great works of art an optional extra.
Along comes my seventh child and from an early age she was drawn to art and loved to draw. I did the same as I’d done with the others but she wanted to draw all the time and especially liked to draw people. I had piles of sketchbooks that she’d filled but as time went on she started getting frustrated with how her drawings looked.

There's another version of the proverb above:

You may bring a horse to water but you can't make him drink, however, you can put salt in his oats!

Creating a thirst is something else we can do as initiators.
I had a few home education art resources but they didn’t inspire my daughter much so I started looking for an art teacher to give her lessons. She had about five or six lessons from a couple of different people but they weren’t able to continue for different reasons. She enjoyed the lessons and they did teach her techniques which helped her. I bought her some good quality paints and pencils and continued to look for ways to develop her interest in this area.
An area I had to encourage her in was perseverance. A piece of work could be spread over time, just like we spread a book out, a chapter per week, or in her case with art, a bit of time each day on piece of art that required a fair bit of work. This helped her with her observation and drawing skills, as well as the practice of perseverance. This is one of her works in progress:

Earlier this year we signed up for a free six week Natural History Illustration course with the University of Newcastle. This was so timely and helpful and there’s been a noticeable difference and improvement in her art. (See some examples of the type of work she did here & here.)
Recently we found some art tutorials in YouTube which have been great, also.

We continue with Picture Study and sometimes an artist inspires her in a particular way. This week I showed her this Mannerist painting by El Greco. It’s one I was drawn to many years ago and she had a similar response to it:

View of Toledo by El Greco (1600)

We've had to work through some difficulties in different area of our children's education. From music teachers to foreign language resources, we've had bumps in the road. One of the most important resources is prayer but it's often something I forget about until everything else fails! We've had some pretty awesome answers when we've focussed on praying for a specific educational need.
I've learned that nothing is too insignificant to put before the Lord.

These are some of the YouTube videos that my daughter's been using recently to help with her art work.

Beauty, Wonder, Keeping, Remembering...

A new find on our nature walk:

Cassinia denticulata

Beauty & Wonder...first time Uncle & Aunty

Anatomy & Physiology

Architecture

 


Old Man Banksia Tree

Nature Notebook

Outside work 

A Latin lesson 

First rose of the season

Physics experiments

The Wonder Book of Chemistry by Jean Henri Fabre - Experiments with the Breath

The Grammar of Poetry - we've been looking at metaphors. This page has fifteen Biblical metaphors.


A drawing narration from a chapter of The Once & Future King - Morgan le Fay's Castle Chariot which was made of food:

'It rose from its lake of milk in a mystic light of its own - in a greasy, buttery glow...'

Handiwork

Moozle continues with scrapbooking, stamping and cardmaking. She made a photo album for her older sister's baby but I forgot to get a photo - she gets ideas from Jennifer McGuire Ink & Sweet Bio Design. Today she made a whole stack of various cards - birthday, Christmas, Get Well etc and yesterday she made this desk calendar:

Picture Study

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) is the artist we're currently studying. I didn't know anything about him and would have overlooked his work completely but I saw he was on the Ambleside Online artist's rotation and so decided to have a look at his work. A German Romantic artist, his work is atmospheric and moody, and we're enjoying spending some time studying his lovely art. We're doing some of the pictures AO recommends and adding in others we like:

 Wanderer Above the Mist, 1817-1818

 Cross in the Mountains, (detail) 1808

The Monk by the Sea, 1808-1810

On Board a Sailing Ship, 1819

Woman at the Window, 1822

Chalk Cliffs on Rugen, 1818-19

Morning, 1820-21

Linking up at Keeping Company

A Miscellany

Miscellany: A group or collection of different items; a mixture

Here is a mixture of some things that have been going on at our place, mostly to do with art and appreciating what is good, beautiful and true...

We've found some very helpful watercolour videos on YouTube and I've posted some of what Moozle's done below after she watched them. There are oodles of them by the same artist & I've made a playlist of the videos we used. There are various levels but a good one to start with would be this one:

The Fifth Day Sea Creatures by Christopher E. Wade is a welcome addition to the area of children's picture books that 'explores some of the diverse ocean life that God created in the Biblical account of the 5th day of creation.' What is unique about this book is the author's beautiful and painstaking  illustrations. He uses a pointillism technique along with watercolours which he demonstrates on his blog here.
A review of the book is here and there is another book on winged creatures coming...

The American artist Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) isn't a well known artist here in Australia and I possibly would have passed her by if Moozle hadn't shown such an interest in painting flowers. We're using some of her paintings, including those below, for picture study for a few weeks in order for Moozle to take some time 'to see.'

'Nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small it takes time - we haven't time - and to see takes time, like having a friend takes time.' 

 Petunias, 1924

'When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.'  

Autumn Leaves, Lake George, 1924

'I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.'

The only book I could find on the artist was the children's book below by Mike Venezia, which was written for younger children but it has a good selection of her paintings and Venezia's books are always fun to read.

 

I feel like I've been doing this forever - 1 inch hexagons using the English paper piecing method.

Larger hexagons - one and a half inch - i.e. each edge is 1 inch long - using up scraps. I'll wait until I have a good hundred basted before I attempt to put them together. I'll use tones, light, medium, dark to work out how the pieces will fit together. Moozle is helping me with this.

I use these pre-cut templates

Picture Books for Art & Book Lovers

These are some of our favourite picture books because they are either beautiful and/or unique. I only realised as I was putting this post together that three of these books have some connection with France.

Poetry for Kids: Emily Dickinson - Illustrated by Christine Davenier; edited by Susan Snively

Emily Dickinson is a poet my children didn't take to very much. Moozle listened in when I was reading the poet's work aloud a few years ago to her older (less than impressed) brothers and decided she didn't like her either. However, I found this delightful book of Dickinson's poems illustrated by Christine Davenier, who was born in France and lives in Paris. The watercolour illustrations in the book were the drawcard for my artistically minded daughter. So I read a poem, she does some art appreciation, we decide which pictures we each like best and then she does some watercolour of her own using the paintings in the book as a guide. The illustrations have made a difference in her attitude to the poems of Emily Dickinson and helped Moozle to appreciate her work.

Paris, Up, Up and Away by Helene Druvert

This is a beautifully designed, whimsical picture book set in Paris with the Eiffel Tower as the main character. It's marketed as a children's book but the laser paper cuttings it contains are delicate and lace-like and would be appreciated by anyone with an eye for beauty and an interest in art and paper cutting. 'Scherenschnitte' is a term I was familiar with, which is the German form of paper cutting, and apparently Découper is the French form. This book takes the art form to a new level with the precision that the laser cutting manages to perform.

The Eiffel Tower is bored today
Wouldn’t it be nice to fly away?
Paris is full of things to do –
The Tower would like to see them too
The Tower takes off for the day
To watch the city work and play …

I bought this book when it first came out for my daughter who was 22 years old at the time and I don't have it here at present so I'm not able to post any pictures of the contents (but there are some here). It is the perfect gift for art lovers and francophiles. I must buy another copy for my youngest daughter who is using the Classical Academic Press French curriculum. (Free giveaway to enter here if you're interested) 

The author has another similar book: Mary Poppins, Up, Up and Away.

 


Vendela in Venice by Christina Björk; illustrated by Inga-Karin Eriksson

This is a short chapter, lavishly illustrated book that takes the reader on a journey through Venice. As Vendella's father said, "Every child should go to Venice." If you can't get there just yet, this book will give you a wonderful introduction to the culture and history of this fairy-tale city. For ages from around 8 years and up. The Classical Kids audio, Vivaldi's Ring of Mystery makes an ideal accompaniment to this book. (It's on YouTube)

Marguerite Makes a Book by Bruce Robertson; illustrated by Kathryn Hewitt

Set in Paris, Marguerite's father works at illuminating manuscripts for the nobility of France.
My youngest daughter loves this book and we used it when we did Ambleside Online Year 1. Today she referred to this book when she was looking through 'A Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady' for nature notebooking inspiration. Marguerite Makes a Book is lovely inducement for budding artists.

The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady by Edith Holden

What is the definition of a picture book? About 32 pages with illustrations directed primarily for children? Did you know that the 2008 Randolph Caldecott Medal, the highest honour an artist can achieve for children's book illustration, was given to the author of a 500 page novel set in Paris? So I'm taking the liberty of putting The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady in a post of picture books. There are about 176 pages (depending on which edition you get) of the most exquisite paintings from the hand of a woman who had a naturalist's eye for detail combined with an artist's sensitivity. Holden made her first entry in her diary in 1906 and continued to record the changing seasons, poetry, nature observations and her own thoughts over the whole year in this lovely book.
In 1976, Holden's great-niece approached a publishing house with the original diary that had been passed down to her and the result was the publication of a 're-originated,' full-colour fascimile edition in 1977. There have been numerous editions of this book and this is the hardback copy I have which was published in 2000.

Edith Holden described her English countryside but the beauty of this book is its inspirational value, and her observations of the natural world, even though half a world away, are relevant for aspiring  naturalists wherever they might be. When I spend some time with this work I can't help but feel motivated to imitate what she has done.

A Child of Books by Oliver Jeffers & Sam Winston

A Child of Books resulted when the children's author and illustrator, Oliver Jeffers, and Sam Winston, a typographical artist, combined their efforts. It's a unique, multi-layered book that uses excerpts from classical children's books such as Little Women and Treasure Island, within the illustrations and is done in such a way that anyone of any age  interested in books would appreciate poring over it. I bought it for my older daughter who collects quality picture books to use in her teaching.
There's an interview with both of the authors here.