With each of the art labs comes an artist study. I love artist studies, they are one of my favourite ways to teach the children! This study was on Rose Sielian Theriault:
Rose Sielian Theriault: Pear Squared
The art chosen was an etching called ‘Pear Squared’. The girls cut out, labelled and stuck in their sketch books a photocopy of Pears Squared:
Rose Sielian Theriault: Recreating the Still Life
We attempted to recreate the still life she had etched from. It wasn’t perfect by near enough:
Rose Sielian Theriault: First Sketches of Pear Squared
The first thing the girls did was to sketch it. They did this without any instruction from me apart from reminding them to observe. Within seconds they were critical of their work and kept rubbing it out and starting again. So I confiscated the eraser and told them ‘No more rubbing out!’:
Rose Sielian Theriault: Contour Drawing with Pen
Next, I asked them to do a pen drawing. For this they used a sharpie, to prevent any rubbing out. I want them to have courage and to not be scared of making their marks on the paper in front of them. I instructed them to observe the still life more than they observed their drawing. They were to only use single lines, without any type of sketching or shading. Rose does her pears with single lines to great effect:
The girls were really happy with their contour drawings. I thought Abigail did really well as she filled the whole sheet, and her drawing had a beautiful individuality to it. Becca had done really well in observing and drawing what she saw without allowing her perfectionist tendencies to destroy her enjoyment of the process:
Rose Sielian Theriault: Charcoal Drawing in their own Style
Last week, the girls learnt a little about using charcoal, and both loved it! They had created some great drawings of a pot. This week, I wanted them to try the charcoal again, but this time attempting to recreate the still life in front of them in their own style:
I loved Becca’s which had a touch of the Picasso about it. But more than her drawing, I loved the fact that she was enjoying the whole activity, and wasn’t getting despondent by the results:
Both were so different from last week’s drawings, but each had their own style and interest. We didn’t try any of the cross-hatching of shadows like Rose had in her Pear Squared, but I thought they had handled the specifications of Art Lab 1 (contour drawings) really well, and had moved forward in their enjoyment of their art.
We hung them up in our mini art gallery in the corner of our dining room. They love showing visitors what they have achieved and all they are learning:
I will be posting the whole of the first Art Lab later on today.
Such fun!
I was searching online for an upcoming art exhibit my aunt was having, and I came across your artist study blog post on Rose Sielian Theriault. She’s my aunt! That’s so cool! How did you decide to study her work?