Teaching Impressionist Art

In September, at back to school night at my daughter’s school, the principle said they were going to do an Art Club and if anyone there had an interest, they could teach it. My husband nudged me, and although I was knee deep in my preparations for my art exhibit, I took the plunge. The principle hired me on the spot. When I met with the art teacher to find out what had been done in the past, she told me to make it work around my life not the other way around. It was the end of November before I could make the planning of Art Club work around my exhibit. I did a quick two week session in December of Holiday Crafts and today is the first day of Impressionist Art.

My plan for Impressionist Art is probably more extensive than we have time for. After setting up the room, waiting for the bus students who wait in the room to leave and leaving time at the end to clean up, I figure I will probably have 45 minutes each week. The session only last for the month of January.

But today, we are going to look at Monet’s artwork—specifically his fields of flowers. And then I’m going to hand out some reference photos and let the kids loose on painting a field of flowers.

I learned a long time ago that a teacher is more successful if they have tried out the activity before they try to teach it.

As I started painting my own field of flowers, I started by using a pencil to loosely mark where I wanted the shapes to be. Then I blocked in the sky, the tree line and the green field. As I began to go in and do another layer on top of the green field to change the temperature of the green and the value, I realized that if I left a section with the original blocking in, I could save demonstration time and let the kids have more time to paint. I drew a line and then painted everything to the right of the line. Then I drew another line and painted everything to the right of that line. Each time adding another layer of paint.

I really like the end result. Not only do I think it will be a great teaching aid, but I also can see where I should have stopped. I don’t like the lines I painted in the last section. I could have stopped at the next to last layer, or at the very least only put in 3 to 5 lines in the last section.