A Net in Time

Curriculum and book reviews, faith, homeschooling and more!

Art

Art Book Series; How to Draw

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Every artist can use a bit a help in learning how to draw, particularly images that can be difficult.  How to Draw, 21 lessons in 48 pages.  All you need to get you well started on your artistic journey. 

I have to admit, I have a couple of books in this series.   How to Paint and How to Draw. But today I want to talk to you about the How to Draw book.  🙂

As I mentioned early, 21 lessons are included in this book, lessons that cover how to draw a variety of animals and vehicles, 8 lessons focus on various aspects of the human body, the remaining four lessons focus on cartoons.

One of the things I like is how the drawings look like they are in perspective, and directions are very clear about why you want to draw certain shapes to suit the object you are trying to draw, like a large plant eating dinosaur would have block-like limbs to hold him up, whereas an dinosaur built to run would have angular limbs and more circles where their joints would be. 

Drawing a horse would use bigger circles and triangles with straight lines joining them.  And cat would be circles, small squares and triangle eyes.   It’s neat to watch it all come together, smoothing out the lines to form the sleek animals one sees around them.

I have been told that drawing people is hard (and coming from someone who draws stick figure people I believe it).   So having eight pages of different ways to draw people is an important part to have in a book.

How would you draw a football player?

But if you learn to draw the lines and the circles so that you can fill in the rest, don’t you think it would make it easier to draw a person?   I look at these drawings and I think… even “I” could learn how to do that!   What do you think?   Could you learn to do that too?

How to Draw
Author: Helen Webster
Pages: 48
Type: Art Book, softcover
Publisher: Capella
Series: How to

Where to find:
Amazon.ca: How to Draw

Amazon.com: How to Draw

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©2006-2017 A Net In Time. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. A Net In Time/

Art Book Series: Discover Great Paintings – A Child’s Book of Art

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 Do you want your children to understand the great artists?  Or even just to know how to look at some of the great paintings done?   Discover Great Paintings will teach you how to unpack these great pieces of artwork so you can discuss them well.

The first chapter in this book teaches a person how to look at art work.
Questions to ask, details to look at and facts about the artist.
The next 13 chapters unpack 13 different pieces of art work, helping the reader to understand them and learn the questions to ask about any artwork you can find. 

Learn to understand the colours, textures, emotions, shapes presented.

As you can see different elements are pulled out of the painting and discussed.

The facts about each painting are drawn out .. such as the castle belongs to a king, skulls show the dragon has been a danger, the princess wants to be saved, and the dragon is a symbol for evil (whereas the cross on the shield is a symbol for good). 

Learn the facts behind the scenes

Remember details about the artist:

 Learn how to look at art work, see everything you can in the paintings you see.  Be aware of all the great questions you can ask of an artist of the work that they do.  Or that you can ask of yourself if the artist is no longer living.  There is more in a piece of art then you might think eh!  🙂

Discover Great Paintings: A child’s book of art
Author: Lucy Micklethwait
Publisher: Firefly Books
32 pages.
Type: Hardcover
Art Book

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©2006-2017 A Net In Time. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. A Net In Time/

Art Book Series: Claude Monet:Sunshine and Waterlilies

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The small book on Claude Monet is written as though a young person was writing a report for school, complete with what she likes and doesn’t like about Monet’s painting and some of the food he liked it eat.   It covers from his early years til the end of his life.

It’s a rather neat little book just packed full of pictures and text about Monet.  Did you know that Monet had a temper and if he didn’t like his work he’d rip it up or throw it into the river (if out in a boat mind you).

One of the nice touches I thought the comparison of Renoit and Monet doing the same scene.  Each artist had his own touch.    Both I think are great.  Two friends who often painted together. Neighbours, Friends, Rivals, both Impressionists.

I love the multitude of images and the easy read font.  I found it fascinating seeing Monet’s early work and how much it changed the longer he was an artist.   

For instance this early one : La Pointe De La Heve at Low Tide
As Opposed this later one: San Giorgio Maggorie by Twilight.

Monet was well known for liking to paint the same scene at different times of the day. He loved to be outdoors painting rather than indoors doing portraits or still-life images.  It took a long time for his style of art work to be accepted, but when they did, it enabled him to build an awning to sit under when he painted, it meant he didn’t need to live with friends or only eat beans for months on end.

This was a very interesting book that piqued my (and my son’s) interest in Monet.

 Claude Monet: Sunshine and Waterlilies
Author: Steven Packard
Illustrator: True Kelley
Published by Grosset & Dunlop
Series: Smart about Art
32 pages

Where to find it:
Amazon.ca: Claude Monet: Sunshine and Waterlilies

Amazon.com: Claude Monet: Sunshine and Waterlilies (Smart About Art)

Here’s a neat series of videos about Monet:

This post may contain affiliate links – using affiliate links from A Net in Time helps fuel this blog and our homeschool – thank you!

©2006-2017 A Net In Time. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. A Net In Time/

Art Book Series: 1-2-3 Draw

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 Today I have a book from my own collection. 1-2-3 Draw, a  neat coil bound book that teaches the student how to draw a variety of objects. 

One of the things I like about this book is how it LIES FLAT.  Oh heavens, too many art books don’t which means you need to weight down the book in order to use it effectively.   Having a coil ring art book makes it easy to display if showing a classroom or to lie flat as you learn.

Five sections to choose from including: wild animals, dinosaurs, farm animals, knights/castles and vehicles.

It’s a book of simple line drawings, walking the student through a series of circles and lines to help them accomplish their drawings.  Learning the technique for one animal, object or person will help them learn how to do it for others.

Followed by inspiration on how to put it all together.   Each section ended with a picture of how you might put it all together.  

Not only that, as you learned to draw an animal, object or item, you were given a brief spot of information about it.

 All in all a good book to learn how to draw different things.  The only thing my son and I dislike is that some of the animals are a bit disproportionate (legs being too long for the body), but that is easy enough to fix eh?  🙂

 1-2-3 Draw: Super Fun Stuff
 Author: Freddie Levin
Publisher: Peel Productions, Inc.

Five books in one

 
 
Where to Find it?
Amazon.ca: 1-2-3 Draw Super Fun Stuff: 5 Books in One

Amazon.com: 1-2-3 Draw Super Fun Stuff: 5 Books in One

This post may contain affiliate links – using affiliate links from A Net in Time helps fuel this blog and our homeschool – thank you!

©2006-2017 A Net In Time. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. A Net In Time

Progression in an Art Project

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So I finished my art project a while back but haven’t done up a post to tell you about it.   Today is that day as I sit huddled in a cuddle blanket because baby it’s cold outside.  🙂

I started this project with the high hopes that my lad would join in and make one of his own, but the method and the medium where just too different for him to wrap his head around, so I made it sitting next to him as he worked on his own project.  This gave me the opportunity to say.. so this is what I am doing now.. what do you think?   Or do you think if I do this it might work?   This proved to be a really really good thing to do.  He gave me some great ideas as well.  🙂

I started off drawing a generalized picture of some mountains.  My son had started a pencil sketch of the mountains at the same time. 

I then started to layer some tissue paper over my drawing, folding it in to create mountain peaks, layering over top of each to hopefully create depth and shading.  All my tissue paper came from gifts or wrap that some stores use when you buy clothes from them.   The brown paper came from a book review.  Each layer was modge-podged well together and left to dry between episodes.

As you can see the mountains gradually came together.   I even showed my lad a quick way to add a touch of colour and he was quite surprised at how easy it was. 

Since this was a work in transition I wasn’t quite sure what I really wanted to do with it.  I knew I wanted some texture and colour and to make something unique to peak the interest of my lad, so when the mountains where done I added some green trees (just triangles of tissue).  Then I got the brainstorm of adding some clouds that were fluffy.   Oh my…You should have seen the surprise on my boys face!!   Then he said “MOM!   That works!   Can I do one too?”

We talked about whether we should leave them white or experiment with how we could turn them into black rain clouds, but the risk was we’d wreck them so the risk was rejected.
 
The trunk caused a bit an issue for me.

I wanted to find a way to add some texture as my thought was to have the trunk pop out a bit… like seeing a tree in the foreground and having the background fade away behind it.

I tried laying tissue paper.. looked horrible and I thought “OH NO!!   It’s been ruined!!!”  But then I got to thinking I could cover up the horribleness with twisted strands of tissue paper.   And it worked!   

You should have heard the lad…. “Mom.. I really like that.  You did a better job doing that then the other paper. “

He helped me cut the limbs for the top of the tree.  He volunteered to help me out with this.   Having the limbs hang out over the edge of the paper was his genius at work.
 

 The canoe.. oh my….

This was HARD to do.   We tried a number of things to make a realistic canoe and nothing really worked.  I finally looked for a canoe picture and VERY carefully cut it out, then traced out a canoe bottom and glued that together.

Then I added a piece of foam to the bottom to make it stand out from the bottom.   The lad chose the location and then we were done. 

Dad pronounced it well done and the lad WILL NOT let me remove it.  It stays on display in the bookroom and it makes me smile.  🙂

This abstractly, see how it does art, was just so much fun to do and made for much conversation twixt the lad and myself.  I LOVE IT!!!  (the smiles it brings to me as I think back over it).
 
So what fly by the seat of your pants art have you made lately?  

Going to link this up at Kym’s and Charleen’s Art Post thing they have going on.   

This post may contain affiliate links – using affiliate links from A Net in Time helps fuel this blog and our homeschool – thank you!

©2006-2017 A Net In Time. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. A Net In Time/

Art Series: Sister Wendy’s Story of Painting

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It is my total delight to introduce DoodleMom to you, also known as Kirsten to the blog today. I put a call out for people to do an art book post for the blog and Kirsten stepped up to the challenge. 🙂

Kirsten blogs at  DoodleMom’s Homeschooling Life and is a new to me blogger this year.  Let me tell you…she is a gal who makes me think and ponder in a way I sometimes don’t expect and that is a good thing eh?  🙂  Keeps me from being stagnant and who wants that eh?

 Sister Wendy’s Story of Painting

I did not notice until recently that a very proper and very, very smart nun with a history of teaching English and Art was also a master of polite sarcasm. 

My kids and I were watching Sister Wendy’s Story of Painting (available free on Docuwatch) and reading another chapter in her book of the same name. Art history with Sister Wendy reinforces and makes additional connections to the events and people of the history the kids are learning, as well as helping them to understand composition and technique. And Sister Wendy is also teaching my kids the fine art of polite sarcasm. 

My children sat on either side of me, magnifying glasses in hand so they could investigate each tiny detail of the paintings discussed in the text. We were looking over Sister Wendy’s comparison of illuminations from England, France, Ireland, and Spain, all from the same rough time period.
And we came to this statement, “Like the Irish monks, the British also produced manuscripts of great beauty, this being one of the very few periods in which the least visual of national groups, the English speakers, attained international fame as artists.”
“Hmmm,” I thought to myself.
As we continued, my children began to pick up on the sarcasm as well. 

We got to the section discussing the Bayeux Tapestry and Sister Wendy wrote, “It displays the same jerky animation that we find in English manuscripts. A sort of Anglo-Saxon glorified comic strip…”
Finally we read through the section on French illumination in which Sister Wendy wrote, “A lovely missal survives…,” and “…with a magnificent pictorial “O” and…”
“OK,” said my son. “She definitely likes the French best and the English least.”  While her sarcasm stings and is quite apparent, it is also exceedingly polite. A grand way to show her preferences and dislikes. 

And, once my children recognized her sarcasm, the whole activity of studying art became an interactive one. First understanding Sister Wendy’s preferences, the reasons behind them, enjoying her wit, and finally forming their own opinions on the art or artist in question.
All in all, a perfect way to study art.

Where to Find More

Book:
Amazon.ca: Sister Wendy’s Story of Painting

Amazon.com: Sister Wendy’s Story of Painting

Documentary: Sister Wendy`s Story of Painting (6 episodes)

 

 

About Kirsten

Kirsten West is a Christian Homeschooling Mom who blogs at DoodleMom’s Homeschooling Life. 

This post may contain affiliate links – using affiliate links from A Net in Time helps fuel this blog and our homeschool – thank you!

©2006-2017 A Net In Time. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. A Net In Time/

Draw & Discover by Yasmeen Ismail

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 I have a DELIGHTFUL series of books for you to learn about today.  Draw and Discover books by Yasmeen Ismail.   Each book has it’s own theme from emotions, directions, or even perspective. 

I have got to walk you through these books that are geared for the younger crowd! 

One of the aspects of these books that I like is they use simple drawings and text to allow children the freedom to explore the meaning of a word using whatever they want to draw to do so. 🙂   Great paper… a thicker quality that will resist leaking through, ripping, and multiple pencil erasures.

 
The pages leave plenty of room for drawing and colouring. 

There is so much room given for children to express their creative side while learning new words.     Why not use art to help teach?

Each book is 56-64 pages long with a two page spread to help explore a single emotion (excited, sad, proud etc), or opposite words (up/down, push/pull etc). 

If you have a singleton child it is definitely a use it up as you go book, or if you have multiple children, you could use it as a springboard to developing your own pages.

Each book has a hard fly (front and back)that could be used as a book mark or a “put behind the page” sheet to prevent leaking of paint or markers to the next page.
That fly contains all the words used within the book as well, making it a good “let’s look ahead page” or a “let’s review what we’ve learned page”. 

The three books are called:
  
Happy, Sad, Feeling Glad.  Cat and Dog lead the way of exploration.
Inside, Outside, Upside Down.  Bear, Rabbit and Duck are the guides.
Push, Pull, Empty, Full.   Rabbit, Duck and Bear show the way.

All published by Laurence King.   Geared for ages 4-7 years old.  56-64 pages long.  
Everything in these books is designed to get children thinking, doodling, drawing, colouring and learning.   An innovative series by a remarkable children’s author: Yasmeen Ismail.
 

This review is part of an Art series is part of an on-going series of Art books reviewed for your pleasure and resource.    You can find more books here and here.