Drawing and Writing

I've been wondering a lot this past year about the creative connections (brain-wise) between drawing and writing. I tend to write every day in some capacity, but I don't often take the time to draw. But during the last school year, the sweet girl and I took time every week to draw together, first utilizing Drawing with Children by Mona Brookes (a book I would highly recommend for people of all ages) and then just "free-drawing," often copying pictures from book illustrations.

The result was astonishing for me. The sweet girl had a boldness and freedom in drawing right away, a boldness I lacked (inhibited as I was by decades worth of no-practice, of cautious drawing and insecurities) but I gained confidence as the months went on. Although we've not been able to work drawing into our curriculum nearly as much this school year, we still make drawing time whenever we can, and we both (oh joy!) got beautiful new art supplies for Christmas.

What I've discovered, besides a real love of drawing for its own sake, is that drawing often seems to fire up the creative synapses in my brain. If there's time, I almost always follow up a drawing session with a bit of writing, not because I think I have to, but because one activity seems to flow naturally from the other. I write better -- I make more interesting connections with words, I play more -- if I'm warmed up first with drawing.

It's been a fascinating discovery, one that I wish I could spend more time thinking about, or even better, actually engaging in. For now, I'm discovering that drawing can also help me as I work on longer bits of fiction. In the waning days of 2011, I've found a sudden bit of fiction writing fire in my bones I haven't felt in a long time. In the past few weeks, in spite of tiredness, holiday busyness, and end of semester grading, I've dived back into a WIP (work in progress) that is essentially a fairy-tale/fantasy.

What's been helping me when I start to feel stuck? Drawing the characters, and most specifically styling their hair and creating costumes for them. For the latter inspiration, I'm hugely indebted to The Chronicles of Western Fashion, a library book D. brought home a few months ago when the art camp kids were working on costume design. We've checked it out abundant times since, and just this past week, it inspired me to create an important character in my story -- a queen I was having a hard time picturing. Picturing her with words is going to be much easier now that I've taken colored pencils in hand and drawn her likeness. It's so much easier to imagine how she she carries her head, the color of her eyes, the sound of the swish of her dress as she walks, now that I've drawn her.

Vermeer Reviews

I've posted two reviews recently on books that creatively engage the wonderful art of Jan Vermeer (1632-1675).

The first is Bob Raczka's The Vermeer Interviews: Conversations With Seven Works of Art, perhaps my favorite "art appreciation" kind of book for children ever.

The second is In Quiet Light: Poems on Vermeer's Women by Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, a poet I only recently discovered. It felt like such serendipity to come across and enjoy her poems, only to find that she'd done a whole collection centered around and inspired by Vermeer's artwork, which I've also been enjoying so much this autumn.

While the first book is good for all ages (especially appropriate and helpful for eight and up) the second is probably more suited for adults and young adults (though the music of the poems may entrance younger listeners, even if they don't grasp some of the themes).

Another book that creatively engages Vermeer is, of course, Blue Balliett's delightfully different mid-grade novel Chasing Vermeer. I'd post a review except that apparently, I never got around to writing one...hmm. I did however review both its sequels, The Wright Three and The Calder Game. Apparently both of these reviews are buried/lost in the Epinions database right now (which continues to have problems) so if you're interested in them, I'd love it if you'd click through directly from here so you can actually access them.

I'd also love to hear about any other good books and resources you'd recommend on the life and work of Jan Vermeer.

Attentiveness

One of the things I love about building a learning life are the moments of serendipity.

Yes, some of the moments are at least partly, semi-consciously planned (which OK, I realize, makes them less serendipitous...). For instance, during this first week of school we've begun to focus our world history studies on the 17th century. Next week we'll be looking at the Netherlands in the early 1600s, and...not entirely by coincidence...our artist of the month in fine arts appreciation is Jan Vermeer, a Dutch artist who painted in the early 1600s. I've even decided that we're going to launch into The Wheel on the School (set in the Netherlands) as our next read-aloud.

But some moments are so beautiful you just can't plan them.

I've decided that this year we're going to focus, gently and as naturally as possible, on one character trait each month. This will be a trait we talk about sometimes during candles (our family's time of evening prayer) and try to work into other learning moments from time to time. I chose "attentiveness" as the first trait for several reasons. It seemed like a good one to start the school-year with, as we turn our attention to a whole new season. More than that, however, I am trying to be more sensitive and open to what God is doing in the sweet girl's heart by paying closer attention to the stories from Scripture that really grab her and won't let go. For the past few weeks, the story that has done that for her is the story of Samuel -- the boy Samuel in the temple hearing the voice of the Lord. We have read a particular re-telling of this story over and over, and she is clearly very drawn to it.

And of course, what Eli does near the end of the story is to teach Samuel how to pay attention, how to listen and respond to the voice of God. No small thing. I love listening to the sweet girl chime in on Samuel's words "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening."

And listening is not easy for my girl. Is it easy for any of us? She is a worrier, frequently restless with anxiety and full of what ifs. She can be contemplative, but it's not her natural state these days (full of curiosity and lots of energy, as she should be!) so a listening stance is something we have to nourish. Some of her developmental issues show up in the struggles she has to fully pay attention to and catch "cues" from the people around her. So I'm trying to find ways to nourish listening and attentiveness in small ways: through encouraging us to pause for a period of about half a minute or so of silence before we begin to pray, through the drawing lessons we started together last week (using Mona Brookes' Drawing With Children) where we are learning to relax our eyes and really look, long and carefully, at the elements of shape in an object.

All of which made me smile this morning when I opened up the website I was planning to use for our introduction to Vermeer, and saw this beautiful painting:



It's called "The Lacemaker" and it immediately spoke "attentiveness" to my soul. I quickly shifted from my original plans to look at another Vermeer painting and we spent time with this one. All during the rest of this busy and somewhat stressed day (I'm overwhelmed with work, fighting illness, and supporting my husband through a very stressful time in his family's life) I kept going back to the quiet serenity of this picture.

I love it when moments like these happen. Serendipity.

Thoughts That Dance

What an odd week this has been, and what odd directions I find my thoughts going in as we reach the end of it.

Like so many people, I've been horrified and saddened by the news from Haiti. My prayers are with the people there who have already suffered so much and now are suffering even more devastation in the aftermath of the earthquake.

Our second year grammar work in homeschool has us studying earth science, and we've actually been reading and learning about volcanoes and earthquakes for the past few weeks. Yesterday we happened upon the chapter in our geography/science text (A Child's Geography: Explore His Earth) on plate tectonics. Just last week we'd begun our discussion of the plates of the earth's crust by boiling a hard boiled egg and cracking it, then coloring the small cracks with marker to get a sense of the way the plates look and how they fit together. Yesterday we talked about their various kinds of movement/motions at the boundaries, and how some of those movements cause earthquakes. We've been reading some of the news from Haiti and praying for the country and its people together; it was sobering to look up maps and see the lines sketched round' that show the boundaries and fault-lines where earthquakes are most likely to happen, and to see how the Caribbean is just ringed by such lines.

One of the enrichment activities in our science book called for doing some stretches/movements to reinforce the learning around certain ways the earth's plates move. Simple things, like standing facing each other, holding hands, and moving apart...the plates diverge. Or standing, facing each other, palms pressed together, and walking toward each other until you have to bend and your arms and hands move up as though a mountain was pushing up...the plates converge. The author called these movements earth's "dance steps." I confess I momentarily hesitated before introducing them that way during this particular week: dance feels like such an elegant, beautiful metaphor in the context of discussing earthquakes right now. But then, there's always that tension really. I recall the sweet girl realizing that when we studied volcanoes. We looked at some photos that were really astonishing in their beauty, fountains of flames shooting up against a dark sky. "They're so pretty," she said, "and so scary."

Yes. Sometimes storms, or releases of the earth's energy, have power and beauty even as we recognize their ability to devastate land and people's lives. But there is nothing beautiful in the havoc they wreak or the suffering endured because of it, though we can begin to see hope again in the outpouring of love and response to the people who are hurting.

All of these things were working in the back of my mind as we began our art appreciation studies this morning. It's our last week on Boticelli, and I'd saved my favorite of his paintings for last...The Cestello Annunciation. I first discovered this painting a number of years ago through Andrew Hudgins' poem "Boticelli: The Cestello Annunciation." It begins:

The angel has already said, Be not afraid.
He's said, The power of the Most High
will darken you. Her eyes are downcast and half-closed.

You can read the rest of the poem here, and it's very much worth reading, a poem I both love and wrestle with.

The poem has always colored my view of this painting, and today it was colored further by my whirling thoughts about earthquakes, dances, beauty, power, fear, love. There is a sense of a courtly dance when you look at the figures of the painting, with Mary bowed slightly toward the angel who rests on bended knee, speaking to her, about to present her with lilies. He is telling her the news, and it's good news, but as we see in her hesitancy (enforced by the poem) and the one hand that seems to say "stop" it is also fearful news. We forget sometimes that this was, if I may use the metaphor in this week, potentially earth shaking, earth shattering news in the life of this very young girl. Strong words, but I mean them gently. I mean that the mending of the world cost a great deal, on God's part, on Mary's part. That Mary, opening herself and saying the great YES, must have done so with great joy and hope, but also with fear and trembling and awe, for sometimes those things are kin and reside closer together than we feel comfortable acknowledging.

So many whirling thoughts. And to this I will add one more, spoken from the precious lips of my seven year old who stared thoughtfully at the rich reds and golds of this beautiful painting this morning and then said, "But Mary was actually very poor. She probably wouldn't have worn clothes like that." We've been talking about how some painters make Biblical figures look and dress like people in their own day, partly as a way to help people step inside the story and understand its importance in their own every day lives. But it's good and right to note the incongruity, even as we celebrate the inner beauty of the moment and Mary and understand why Boticelli painted this picture as he did. It's good and right to remember, perhaps especially this week, that the beautiful and powerful news the angel brought to Mary was especially good news to the poor.

Ehlert Inspired Art

The sweet girl's love of picture books continues unabated. Mine too! She recently informed me that she thinks her three favorite authors are Shirley Hughes, Beatrix Potter and Lois Ehlert. Note that all three of them are author/illustrators...and I could add some of her other favorites like Jane Hissey and Marisabina Russo to that mix too.

We've been in arts mode around here for the past few weeks. I never had a chance to post our Botticelli-inspired Christmas ornaments, but I thought I'd post a bit of Ehlert-inspired artwork we did this past Friday. The inspiration comes from Ehlert's book Pie in the Sky and from this marvelous art project idea from Art Smarts 4 Kids (links will take you to my review of the book on Epinions, and the project on Art Smarts, a great website I've really enjoyed getting to know in recent weeks).

I helped in bits and pieces, but I tried to let the sweet girl do as much of it as possible. I'm trying to learn to be more of a hands-off resource/guidance person when it comes to art projects. I thought this came out really well: we especially enjoyed using the corrugated cardboard to make the tree trunk, and using edges of that textured cardboard to paint/stamp details on the rest of the project.

"How to Talk to Children About Art": A Book I'm "Reading At"

I've been realizing that I tend to categorize books I'm reading into two major categories: books I read, and books I "read at."

"Read at" is a funny expression, I suppose (does it come from my southern roots?) but it seems to capture what I mean by the way I read certain books. Although many books have narratives that inspire me to read from cover to cover, others are books that I only dip into periodically, or read for a spell and then go back to later.

Some of my "read at" books would best be classified as reference books, while others are longer books that I find myself taking breaks from but going back to. For me, those are most often history books. History tends to hum, like a giant refrigerator, in the background of whatever else I'm reading. I have favorite periods of history I go back to especially often.

"Read at" books sometimes get a bit shortchanged: they can't always be added to a neat little list of "books read this month" or even "books read this season" (like my quarterly reading round-ups). Sometimes I "read at" a book for a long enough period of time that I do eventually finish it, but even then, I find reviewing it more challenging.

So every once in a while, I plan to do a post where I talk about some of the books I'm "reading at" -- the ones humming in the background while I'm busy reading other things.

One such "at" book for me right now is How to Talk to Children About Art by Francoise Barbe-Gall. I found this book by accident when I was looking for another book about art for children: it was one of those eye-grabbers in our county library system. I placed it on hold and then forgot about it until it came in.

But it's a terrific little book. Just the right size to tuck into a bag and take to a museum, if you're so inclined, and it would be very useful there. In addition to a large section of discussions of actual paintings, under the heading "How to Look at a Picture," the book also contains two other sections. One is called "A Good Start" and offers practical guidance on how to help a child develop an interest in paintings, ways to get the most out of museum trips with children, and what kinds of paintings are best to show children, depending on their ages.

The ages the author addresses are 5-7, 8-10, and 11-13 year olds. The book doesn't tackle the topic of art with adolescents, but my guess is, if your child is good and hooked on art by the time he or she is a teenager, then further exploration will unfold naturally. Because it only goes up through 13, the ages don't quite equate to the "trivium" stages of learning, but the suggestions for each of the age groups did seem to roughly correspond to learning styles and methods most classical homeschoolers will be familiar with from their understanding of the grammar/logic/rhetoric phases. In other words, the focus of learning moves from concrete to more analytical.

Th middle section, entitled "It's OK Not to Know," includes questions and answers about museums, art and art history. I've learned a lot myself from perusing this part.

The final section offers 30 paintings (produced here in small color reproductions) with more questions and answers, sort of discussion starters/prompts, if you will, about each of the paintings. The author has colored coded the pages so you know which Q&As will help you most when talking with children in the aforementioned age groups.

The organization reminds me of a field guide! But instead of color codes for bird plumage, there are color codes for kids. So the "red" sections provide prompts where the goals are straightforward: "identity what you see in the painting...identify the various elements of a painting" (not always easy even for adults, the author says). Then the "yellow" section provides "slightly more searching questions" to help understand the painting, questions that "require some thought and additional time". Finally, the "blue" section helps you find ways to "consider the painting in relation to the outside world" which includes thoughts about the painter and the work's historical importance.

Some of the practical advice in this book seems so obvious, but I found myself thinking about it a lot when we went to the Carnegie Museum of Art this past Sunday (it was a free day!) with our seven year old. I remembered the author's suggestion that I get down on her eye-level and see what she was seeing (and that's eye-opening!) and also the suggestion that I let her tell me what she liked in a particular room full of art (rather than dragging her over to the things I consider most noteworthy) and then spend time looking at it and talking about it together. We also took the sweet girl's "I'm tired" and "my feet hurt" a lot more to heart, and cut the wandering-through-gallery part of the afternoon a little shorter than we might have normally. I agree that it's much better to have her leave with good memories of really looking at a few things than to drag her around till the whole family's exhausted in some effort to cram in more than she's really ready to see.

I've not read all the notes on all the paintings yet (that's part of what makes this book a "read at") but every time I pick it up, I enjoy it more and learn something else new. I like it so much, I'm considering adding it to our permanent library.

First Grade Art: Degas Dancers

On the eve of arts camp, I thought I'd post another of our art projects from first grade year. The month we studied Degas, we drew ballet dancers with chalk on dark construction paper. Another great project idea from the Usborne Art Treasury. I joined in on this project, as you can see from the photo below.

First Grade Art: Water Lilies

Since we're in our last week of school, I'm starting to pull together some notes and pictures from the sweet girl's first grade year. I want to keep these things together with some samples of work from her narration notebooks, so we have a good chronicle of the kinds of things she learned and did this year.

So don't be surprised if I'm posting a few more pictures than usual in the coming days, especially artwork samples.

Here's one from just a week or two ago. We were learning about Monet, and did a tissue paper collage of some water lilies. I helped cut some of the shapes and laid down some of the glue and a few of the tissue paper pieces (S. always complains of sticky fingers) but she did much of the work on this herself. She especially loved tearing the different colored papers into strips and layering them on top of each other.

Relaxed Friday: Art and Music

We're continuing our studies of Chopin and Van Gogh. Today we spent time looking at Van Gogh's painting titled Olive Trees With Yellow Sky and Sun. We enjoyed looking at it so much that we spent time looking at other Van Gogh tree paintings. Doesn't this one: Branches of an Almond Tree in Bloom, just make you crave spring? It did me!

I've come up with a good mnemonic device to help the sweet girl remember Chopin: we call him the "poet of the piano from Poland." Last week we found this beautiful version of his Polonaise Op. 53 "Heroique" on YouTube. Does anyone know what language the commentator on the video is speaking? I gather the pianist is Polish.

Things I Learned from Our "Painting Like Van Gogh" Morning

1. Van Gogh must have used a ton of paint. We read that he sometimes squeezed it directly from the tube onto his canvas, and I believe it. When you look at closely at how his brush strokes look like small furrows in a river of paint, you begin to realize just how much he used.

2. Which makes me understand why he'd likely have no qualms about trading paintings for more paint supplies. There's such sad irony in the fact that Van Gogh never realized much money from any of his artwork, when you consider the millions of dollars an original Van Gogh fetches now. I'd always heard he never sold a painting in his lifetime, and while that's maybe stretching it a bit (at any rate, one book we read indicated that some of his paintings were sold during his lifetime, even if he wasn't the one profiting by the sale) he certainly never received the admiration and acclaim he would later receive. Apparently he traded many paintings for more paint supplies. Given how many hundreds of paintings he did in his lifetime (and the amount of paint he used!) I would guess that was a wise arrangement.


The sweet girl's painting in Van Gogh's style

3. You can thicken acrylic paint with craft glue. I was a tiny bit skeptical when I read this idea in the Usborne Art Treasury, but they were spot on. I used just a dollop of "tacky glue" per puddle of acrylic, and it definitely thickens the paint. Since the glue is very white, it also lightens the paint color a bit.

4. "Glue doesn't belong in paint!" At least not according to my scandalized first grader. "Glue is sticky. We use it to glue things together. We don't put it in paint," she said plaintively. But she grudgingly allowed that it did work to thicken the paint, though she wasn't wild about the mild scent of the glue. She definitely preferred to work with the regular acrylics sans paint. I agreed that regular acrylics were also less messy. (I recommend putting a big sheet down on the floor underneath whatever your painting surface is...we usually do anyway, but given how much paint and glue were involved in this activity, it was doubly necessary!)

5. Van Gogh had a marvelous imagination. Just attempting to paint at all "like him" makes you realize anew what a highly imaginative man he must have been. You also begin to realize how certain simple shapes and lines recur in his paintings, the importance of circles in his work, and the way he used swirls to show movement.

6. I'm still in love with Starry Night.


My Van Gogh homage.

7. One wonders if painting helped keep Van Gogh's depression and sadness at bay. The sweet girl wanted to know why he painted so many paintings, and I told her that was my best guess. "We know he was often sad," I told her. "Perhaps painting made him feel more peaceful." An over-simplified explanation, perhaps, but I'm pretty sure it's still true.

Great Moments in Homeschool History

There are so many things I love about teaching. High on the list are those moments when all cylinders are firing, communication is clear, and your student goes above and beyond what what you're asking them to think about or do!

The sweet girl and I had one of those moments this morning. On Fridays we do art and music appreciation...i.e. we listen to music by a certain composer and look at a painting by a certain artist. Today we were going into a new four week segment on Beethoven and Cezanne. Today was our first day with both.

Our daughter is becoming an artist. She's really amazing us lately with her ability to draw, her eye for color and design, and her desire to "do art" as much as possible. But she also loves to look at paintings. This morning she was sitting at the computer zooming in and out on Still Life With Compotier on the artchive site (great website). I was several feet away, jotting down some notes on our art worksheet/narration page as we talked about the painting together.

As usual, I asked her "What do you notice in this painting? What do you see?" I confess I was expecting her to say something like "apples" or "I see some fruit in a bowl." Instead she gestured at the painting and said, oh so enthusiastically, "What I notice are the bright fruit colors against the darker background."

Seriously. My six year old said this. Yes, I am beaming. What made it even more fun (besides the very astute observation) was how she really found excitement in this. She went on to talk about the different colors and to make sure that I really "saw" what she was getting at about the bright and dark.

Lest one think that our homeschool mornings are always full of non-whining (ha!) enthusiasm and clever answers, let me hasten to tell you about the other moment this morning that made me laugh in a different way.

We'd moved on to listening to some Beethoven. Our loud, exciting piece this morning was the Allegro movement from symphony no. 5. As a good contrast, I thought we'd play the quiet "adagio" from the Moonlight Sonata.

I should mention that the sweet girl truly enjoys music, but it doesn't seem to come close to her passion for visual art right now. Which is fine! I often let her color while she listens to music as it helps her to focus. She was coloring when I moved to the Moonlight Sonata track. I thought I would introduce it briefly, since I love it so much. So I explained what it was called and then (getting a bit misty) mentioned that it was one of my very favorite pieces of music in the world.

At which point she looked up a bit vaguely from her drawing and, without missing a beat, mused "I wonder how llamas get water? You know, when they're up in the Andes..."

Hee. All I could think of was that old Gary Larson cartoon "what we say to dogs" and "what dogs hear." Remember that? "Blah, blah, blah, Ginger..."

Yes, teaching is full of those moments too. Which doesn't make it any less fun or rewarding.

After Monet

I've not had much time to blog recently, as I'm closing out the school year on all fronts: the sweet girls' kindergarten year, and final grades for my seminary course.

But S. and I are still doing "picture study" on Fridays. This past Friday we enjoyed looking at Monet's painting entitled Spring, and after we looked at it and talked a little bit about impressionism, we tried our hand at our own spring pictures. Here are our "After Monet" efforts:


I liked the sweet girl's work here. It's splashy and colorful and definitely captures spring, I think! I gave her an initial pencil sketch of the tree -- I basically just sketched a squiggly line or two to give her the idea of a tree and to get her oriented on the page. She added paint to that, and then took off and created her own beautiful piece, completely on her own.


And here's my attempt. I really enjoyed this!

"Come Look With Me": Picture Study

We've been using Gladys S. Blizzard's book Come Look With Me during our "relaxed Fridays" when we focus on music and art during school-time.

Come Look With Me is a terrific book, inviting children (and their parents/teachers) to explore art together. This particular book, which I believe is first in the series, focuses on paintings that feature children. The sweet girl and I have enjoyed looking at a number of paintings in very different styles. Each painting is reproduced in beautiful color on one side of a two-page spread; the accompanying page includes a paragraph or two on the artist's life and a series of questions you can ask about the picture. Excellent discussion starters.

I learned a thing or two myself today, as we explored the final two paintings, both by Pablo Picasso. I confess I've never been much of a fan of Picasso. Today we looked at his painting "Le Gourmet" (from his blue period) and "Maya and Her Doll," an illustration of cubism. Now I am not in any way, shape or form a fan of cubism, and I was wondering how the odd painting would go down with the sweet girl, but she was totally intrigued by the geometric shapes used to make up the painting. She was so game to look at it and so enthusiastic that I found myself looking at it in new ways too, and actually learning quite a bit from Blizzard's helpful notes about the way in which the girl's face was shown as though we were viewing it in two ways: face on, and in profile, all at the same time. (We had an interesting discussion about profiles...) The sweet girl also seemed intrigued by the notion that how one felt could affect the way you painted, or the colors you chose. The text notes mentioned that when Picasso painted "Le Gourmet" (with the predominant blue) that he was very young, only 19, and feeling very sad. S. wanted to know what he was sad about.

Since we were finishing the book today, and it's due back at the library tomorrow, I asked the sweet girl to choose her favorite painting from the whole book. Given her interest in Picasso today, and the fact that we'd just discussed him, I wondered if she might choose one of those. But she didn't. She picked this:



It's called "The Nut Gatherers." Painted in 1882 by the French artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau. She loved that there were two girls (when we looked at it a few weeks ago, she told me she thought they were sisters...she has very much been wanting one of those!) and that one had dark hair and one light. She smiled brightly when I pointed out that you could see one girl's face almost full on, and the other only in profile.

Highly recommend this art resource for picture study. Our library has some of the other books in the series, and I hope we get a chance to use them all between this year and next.