For this Monet art project, we dove into some background about impressionism. But first, we read the book “The Magical Garden of Claude Monet”. This is one of Laurence Anholt’s books, and I’m a huge fan of his books for kids. After reading the book I asked my daughter what she thought about the story. I love that there’s a brief bio in the back of his books. I usually shorten it and hit some highlights.
There are so many great children’s books about Monet! I’ve linked them here: Portrait of an Artist: Claude Monet, Monet Paints a Day (I love the watercolor illustrations in this one!), Claude Monet (Getting to Know the World’s Greatest Artists) (I love this series because they include biography information and examples of his work.), Monet’s Cat, Claude Monet: The Painter Who Stopped the Trains, Mornings with Monet, Who Was Claude Monet?, Ella in the Garden of Giverny: A Picture Book about Claude Monet , A Picnic With Monet (This one is a board book!)
After the story, we looked at some of Monet’s work and used the steps outlined in this post. I love this chance to hear the inner workings of her brain, her thought process, and her humor shining through at times. It’s such a gift.
Tip: If you are short on time, have a younger, more wiggly little one or just aren’t super interested in the art history portion, no worries! Just skip on down to the project section and get started on step one of the Monet art project right away! Can not stress this enough: there is no wrong way for you to encourage your child to create!
Some interesting things we talked about for this Monet art project:
Did you know that the term “Impressionism” came from one of Monet’s works Impressions, Sunrise (We stopped and looked at a photo of this painting). He first exibited it with his L’Exposition des Révoltés. This was where he and many other now famous artists went against the “deciders of art” at that time and made their own exhibition. A critic wrote an article entitled “Exhibition of the Impressionists” meaning for it to be negative but look what happened instead! The group loved how it described them and their desire to depict an instantaneous impression of a scene in nature. I asked her what she thought about that. We really enjoyed briefly talking about the deeper life lessons here.
Next, she studied and took in a picture of “Olive Trees in the Moreno Garden”.
Once she had time to take it in, I asked her to tell me about it. I try to guide as little as possible in these conversations, and there are zero wrong or right answers. Practicing observation skills, improving visual memory, and an exposure to Monet’s work is the goal. If you would like a step by step no how I do this, I outline it in this post.
Elements we covered:
- Line
- Color
Supplies:
- Watercolor paint
- oil pastels
- watercolor paper
- brush (we used the one included in the paint set linked above)
Start by using brown pastel draw the horizon line (the place where earth and sky meet). Use your pastel to make LINES, smooth, horizontal lines that show the smooth ground.
Next use a black pastel to draw a tree. I demonstrated first a simple tree. Starting at the trunk, go up and down several times and branch into a Y. Keep branching into smaller Y’s until you like the look and balance of your tree.
Use Brown watercolor to paint in the ground. (The pastel will not dissolve. This is because the oil in the pastel is resisting the water based paint. We call this a “water color resist”)
Next, Paint watercolored in the sky and over tree in this order: blue, green, yellow. Try to do it quickly keeping the paint and brush wet. You can talk about using “loose” brush strokes like the impressionists.
Done!
I hope you enjoyed this Monet art project! We’d LOVE to see YOUR Impressionist Trees! Tag me on social media and use the hashtag #amybaileyart or comment below to let me know how it went!
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