Mustang artists were industrious as they worked with various art media to produce self-portraits exhibiting expressions and imagery related to personal feelings about situations, happenings, and people in their lives.  We reviewed main points learned about Frida Kahlo and focused also on depicting certain imagery in unusual and surprising ways as we had observed in many of this famous artist’s works.  Students also included a brief artist statement relating to their work.

Mustang artists begin a second artist profile project!  Today we were introduced to the famous artist Frida Kahlo.  We read about Frida Kahlo’s life in the ‘Getting to know the World’s Greatest Artist’ series and the book ‘Frida Kahlo, The Artist Who Painted Herself- a book in the ‘Smart About Art’ series.  Students split into groups and looked through art resources and artist books on Frida Kahlo.  As a group we compiled a list of important information we learned about Frida:  her influences, major life events, and style.  We learned a lot about her art- she painted herself a lot(!); she painted pictures about how she was feeling and about events and hard times in her life; her images are shocking to a lot of viewers; she included unusual and surprising imagery in her paintings;  she was very creative!  The class also discussed some similarities between what we learned about Frida Kahlo and what we learned about Vincent Van Gogh.

As a related art project, students are creating artworks that show self-portraits expressive of feelings relating to something that has happened, is currently going on, or is going to happen in their lives.  We are incorporating the style of Frida Kahlo- representing and including imagery in an unusual, odd, surprising, perhaps even shocking manner.

Mustang artists completed their sunflower mixed media works today - Vibrant works with dramatic color contrasts!  Some of us created decorative frames for our pieces, and we all enjoyed time to explore different art materials as we created imagery of our own choice.

Today we reviewed all we had learned about the famous artist Vincent Van Gogh and viewed more of his paintings.  We made connections between his use of color during different periods of his life – dark and dreary during particularly unhappy times, and bright and sunny during periods of inspiration- whether from other art styles or personal situation.  The class observed different methods of using oil pastels and watercolor paints- also absorbing information on the wax resist process  and how to achieve contrast in our works as we used this media.  Our garden sunflower sketches are being transformed!

Mustang artists begin an artist profile project on Vincent Van Gogh!  We read one of the ‘Getting to know the world’s greatest artists’ series – Vincent Van Gogh.  This art introduction for children covers significant periods in the artist’s life, prominent styles, and talks about aspects of the artist’s personality in an engaging way so kids can relate to them as ‘real’ people.  The class focused on three main points relating to Van Gogh’s work:  alive with color, feelings coming out in the work, and brush strokes giving everything a feeling of movement.  We also talked about subject matter and ‘motif’ in artworks, and after viewing  Van Gogh’s sunflowers, headed out to the garden to sketch this subject matter.  The class focused on enlarged renderings of specific sunflowers as well as capturing the details available close up.

This week in art we took a field trip to the City Gallery at the Driggs Community Center!  A local ‘artists showcase’ exhibit offered spectacular exposure to a wide variety of works created through many different art processes.  Students viewed oil, acrylic, and watercolor painting, printmaking, encaustic works, photography, mixed media, ceramic art, and fused glass pieces.  We learned and practiced appropriate etiquette in this setting as well as how to interpret information presented along with each artwork.  We were inspired by the possibilities these different art processes present and sketched our ideas on paper.

-An artists reception for this show will be held on Fri. Sept. 13 at 6:30 with music and food as part of the event for those who may be interested in attending.

Check back next week for the first art project of the year with Tonia!