A Net in Time

Curriculum and book reviews, faith, homeschooling and more!

Art

Review: The Art of Beatrix Potter

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Does the thought of Beatrix Potter and her books bring back good memories?   Do you love the art work that she did?   Wouldn’t it be neat to watch a talent develop and see the progression in a famous series of books, as well as to see what else Miss Potter was interested in as an artist?

Well then… Have I got the book for you!!!  

I originally was going to put this book in my art series, (would post mid January), but as I started going through it I thought no…. I cannot wait that long.  This book is WAY to beautiful and nice to let it wait that long.   Beatrix Potter did such lovely work.   I will be referring to it later on in the Art Book Series, but for now, let me tell you about this lovely hardcover book that tells us all about The Art of Beatrix Potter.

So what do you get in this marvellous book?

Five main sections covering
1. Becoming Beatrix Potter
2. London and the South Coast
3. Scotland
4. The Lake District
5. Wales and Beyond

 As I went through this book I discovered reams upon reams of gorgeous drawings.  I met all the characters from her book, discovering that:

I discovered that Beatrix secretly bought Peter Rabbit, and eventually trained him to walk on a leash.  Can you imagine seeing that?   Made me grin when I thought about it.

There is SO much I could tell you about this book, just so very much, but I wanted to tell you about the fungi pictures.  YES.. I like fungi, I love taking pictures of them, and as I was browsing through this book look at what I discovered!!!!

Did you that Miss Potter did up a whole bunch of drawings on fungus..and she did them really well?   I was thoroughly impressed and learned so much!   🙂

That was only one part of the book though, scattered throughout were all her characters that we know and love, Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin and all the rest.

This image made me smile as well, three guinea pigs in a basket.  I used to raise guinea pigs and still miss their wheeking at me first thing in the morning.  Seeing this picture brought back good memories for me.  In fact this whole book did that, seeing the pictures of the Peter Rabbit books and the guinea pigs…just gave me the warm fuzzies.

 This is a very thorough book that is not a dry treatise.   Tons of art work with the words to fill in the details to delight and educate the reader.  Beauty in art, and strength and knowledge in words.  

For anyone who treasures the work of Beatrix Potter and wants to know the woman behind the books and how she developed her talent, this book is a perfect fit.

Author:  Emily Zach
foreword by Steven Heller
introduction by Linda Lear

Publisher:Chronicle Books
Size: 9.96 x 11.28
256 pages

Reviewed for: Raincoast Books

Amazon.ca
Amazon.com

Art Series: Draw, Paint, Print like the Great Artists

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Don’t you love when you find a book that works great for a class you want to teach?   When I first saw this book “Draw  Paint Print like the Great Artists” by Marion Denchars I thought THIS book will be awesome to use in an art classes with a group of children.

And you know what… IT WAS!   🙂

I have to tell you how much fun we had with this 224 page book.   18
different artists that we could discuss it was hard to break it down to
just 6 classes.

One of the artists we learned about was Sonia Delaunay, was a Ukrainian-French artist who work explodes with colourful shapes in unexpected rhythms and patterns.   She loves to do abstract art.    Her work was always infused with abstract, geometric, and brightly coloured patterns.

Check out some of the work the children did.

I just love how the children took the ideas they learned and let them play out in their own ways.  Circles, layers, rectangles, and more.  I was particularly impressed with this one.

The young person who made this is a very shy quiet lad.   He needed a certain amount of prompting and quiet encouragement to attempt his hand.   Circles didn’t appeal to this lad, and he seemed rather uncertain so I read out the description of Ms. Delaunay s work about how it showed geometric shapes.  That peeked his interest so I said.. you know geometic shapes like circles and triangles, and rectangles and squares…and he was off to the races.  🙂   It was SO delightful to see this young fellow grab hold and figure out how to make it all work.     He was bravely different and I love it.  THIS is what I love about teaching art classes, and books like this that inspire and give ideas… I love them.

This is such a great book to use.

If you just want to use it within your family that would be very doable, or if you want to gift a child, this book is meant to used and worked with.

Pages where you can make a self portrait, do aboriginal drawing, learn to use space and so much more.

 
 

 

 

The set up is fairly simple.
Learn about the artist.  See examples of their style.   Learn how to copy that style.  Pages are given if using with an individual student to use, or you can just take the information and talk to a class of children and teach it.  This is a marvellous resource that I plan to use again with another class. 

I will continue to use it with my son in his schooling as well.. but art with a class is SO MUCH FUN.   Ideas that are spawned off each other… it’s amazing to see the encouragement given, the delight in a child’s eyes when they learn something new and accomplish it and the variety AND sense of pride that doing your own thing, while meeting the challenge of an artists gives.

It’s why I like teaching art to children… in my own way.  🙂 

Now I would be remiss if I failed to tell you where I got this great book, it comes my way courtesy of Raincoast Books.  224 pages, 18 artists, great for children 8-12 (or older), published by Laurence King and is about 8 x 11 inches.  Printed on heavier paper to withstand the rigors of being used by an artist.

Five books, five reasons, all about adult colouring.

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Have you joined in on the colouring craze?   You know.. colouring for adults?
I have to admit that when I heard about adults colouring, and not just with their children I thought, huh?   What’s up with that?

So I went out and bought a book, wanted to see what the fuss was about and discovered something.
I enjoy it.  Not so much that I want to do it every day, but sitting down and colouring when you don’t want to read and you don’t want to go out for a hike.. it’s an enjoyable way to kill some time without watching the tube.

I thought I would take the time today to introduce you to some books that I use and some reasons why it’s good to colour.

First book and reason

Peterson Field Guide Coloring Books: Reptiles and Amphibians is a neat book that has colouring images of various reptiles and amphibians and is right up my son’s ally for things to draw and/or colour.   It comes with small stickers that you can use as a reference as well.

 This book is actually my son’s.  He just grinned when I picked it up.  “Look mom!   It’s HalfWay!” (a toad of his).

Reason to Colour: No childish drawing that inspire research into a favourite topic or that simply enhances one’s learning about them.  My lad likes the realistic drawings and the colours that match colours in nature.

Second Book and Reason

Coloring Book Be Still

A chance to think on some words of God as you delight in coming up with just the right colours.  A perfect book for rainy Sunday afternoons when everyone is tired and just wanting to chill out.

This book is filled will flowers and birds and words from the Lord.   Not every page contains a verse, or birds, or flowers.   But much of it does.

Reason to Colour: This is my “let’s be pretty book” which is not my normal frame of mind, so it’s great for Sundays when I NEED to relax and prepare for the coming week.   It’s a girlie type book and out of my normal paradigm of thinking and it’s good to cultivate that part of me sometimes.  🙂

Third book and Reason

Animal Kingdom: Color Me, Draw Me

This book is the one that draws people in when they colour with me.  There is SO MUCH variety contained with the pages.     I’ve started and stopped with so many pictures as my mood will change with what I want to do.  Eventually I’ll get around back to those started.

The pages are thick enough to do pencil or marker.

Reason to colour: Whimsy can take you many different places, and sometimes following whimsy can leave you lost.  In this book, I don’t get lost and I can always come back again.  🙂

Fourth Book and Reason

Art Therapy Coloring Book Menagerie & More

This is actually one that my hubby picked out.
the pictures in it are mostly just animals, and mostly headshots with clean, clear lines.   No white on black or pictures inside of pictures.   It’s a basic interesting colouring.

I find that I start and finish pictures in this book more quickly.  I really enjoy the thick pages and clear images, and hubby is more likely to pick it up and join me in an afternoon of colouring as well.  Which is WAY COOL.  🙂

Reason to Colour:  Sharing a hobby with someone I love. The variety of images allows for different tastes in items to draw.

Fifth book and reason

 LIVE LOVED: AN ADULT COLORING BOOK

Admittedly this is my least favourite colouring book.  There are things I like about it, but I find I have to pay more attention to careful colouring with this book.  Many of the lines are quite thin.

What do I like about it?
Mmm… scripture verses that are quite varied.  Blank pages behind each picture means I can rip them out and display them if I think they are good enough for that.  🙂

Reason to Colour?
Encourages carefulness and attention to detail, which helps to focus on my mind when I have to do things like planning out a school schedule, or vacation plans.

So do you colour?
Do you have books that are different than mine?
Why do you like them?

Share with won’t you?   🙂

Picture Books to Introduce Artists

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My son and I are currently reviewing a program called ArtAchieve.   We are enjoying the program since it comes in different formats, a slide show or a video.  We are finding both formats quite useful.   If you want to give the program a look over they have sample lessons that you can try out.

Anyways, I had mentioned to my contact at Raincoast Books some of the things we were going to be doing, and she graciously sent me some art books to review.  (How cool is that eh!)

First up we looked at a book called “Mary Cassatt – extraordinary impressionist painter” by Barbara Herkert.   This book is around 30 pages long, filled with full colour illustrations throughout.

Lovely book.   We learned about her early life, her determination, her friendships, her stepping outside of what was conventional for ladies in her day.  She was an opinionated and stubborn lady who was determined to be artist, and she did what she wanted to do, no two ways about it.

BUT WOW…. have you ever looked at some of the work she did?    I found a website dedicated to the work of Mary Cassatt and all I can say is WOW.. she did excellent work.    I cannot say I love EVERYTHING that she did, but I like a lot of it.    For instance, check out this child in a straw hat.

http://www.marycassatt.org/Child-In-A-Straw-Hat.html

She drew a lot of people pictures, friends, family, people she saw at theatre and so forth.   Just an interesting lady and this book gives us a good glimpse into her early life.   The illustrator does a great job at bringing the story to life with his full colour art work.

Our next book was one on Beatrix Potter and Her Paint box, written by David McPhail. It’s a short small book, running around 40 pages.  

What a nice little book.  Seriously.  My lad enjoyed this book with me.   We even learned why the Peter Rabbit books were small “little books for little hands” was something that Beatrix insisted upon.   When we learned about the snake getting away from she could paint a picture of it, my lad was quite concerned that the snake got away to a safe place to live.

Like Mary Cassatt, Beatrix Potter did best painting things her own way.

Did you know that the Peter Rabbit books became a story because of a sick boy?   It was a “let me cheer you up when you are sick book” and at the urging of the boy’s mom, it was turned into a book which morphed into a whole series about the friends of Peter Rabbit.

I liked the images in the book as well, well crafted and made me think of Peter Rabbit and his friends.

Oh.. I have to tell you this part.   When we read about Beatrix’s pet mouse running through the paint my lad tried to get one of his house mice to run through some dye and leave mouse footy-prints on paper.  He had so much fun trying to convince the mouse to do so.. but MilkyWay would have NOTHING to do with it.    It was fun watching him try though.  🙂

 Raincoast books was the provider of these books for me.  Wanting only my honest review of them.  They were a delightful addition to our week.

You can find Raincoast at the following social media sites: 

Learning by reading and games.

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We started off our day playing bucking buckaroo a game we picked up at the yard sales on Saturday.
Then we read from a chapter out of black beauty.   The lad asked a TON of questions about what was going on and it was good to talk about standards of care, and how God wants us to take care of the animals around us.
We learned about the common loon in   the ultimate guide to wildlife of North America.    we’ve seen loons before so it was good to learn more about them.  One of the things we learned was there aren’t as many as there used to be since people are destroying their habitats.

we started off with 50 magical stories.  The story today is called The Frog.   It was a story about a mom who wanted her son’s to get the best wife.


in response to the story the lad said “I liked it!”   When asked why he liked it I got the response of “I liked it, mommy, I liked that the good witches were good and they helped the frog”.   And yes, for those concerned .. he knows that we don’t believe in witches, that witches don’t love God and therefore are something we need to be wary of.

Then we finished off  pirates in our world history book.

He finished off both of the  Pirates sticker books.



When I asked if he was pleased with how we did the pirate work and how the books turned out he said yes.  When we talked about the pirates today we learned that there are still pirates today, but the pirates in the past were beaten because the navy built better ships.  Only the young ones (those up to 16 years old) weren’t executed for being bad pirates.

we did another page in the “imagine a place” book


This has been such a fun book to use as a art book.  We read the poem and then draw a picture.  When we are all done with it, then we look at what the artist came up with and discuss it.   Today we needed to imagine  place were music sings where one dances all night on a summer night in a breeze (that wasn’t how the poem went but something like it).   This sparked good conversation about what it means that music can sing, and what it means to dance, and I even needed to demonstrate what a waltz was. 🙂

We learned about bugs today.  We played another game, this one also purchased while yard saling.. called Go, Bugs.  You play it similarly to Go, Fish.  the object of the game is to build a four piece bug.  We didn’t follow the rules since some games are difficult to play with just two people.  But we had fun and we learned about different types of bugs.  

Velveteen Rabbit, Cleaning and Reading

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The day started off with having breakfast before I did the bunny chores.   We had banana pancakes with syrup.    This gave the lad a chance to do reflex math while I toiled outside.  🙂    I came into the sounds of The Velveteen Rabbit playing.  🙂   When we went to the library yesterday we borrowed a copy of this book, so he’s been reminded of how much he enjoys this book/show.  🙂

Our plans for the day include working on our spider unit study, cleaning the living and dining rooms, and tidying up toys on the main floor of the house.

We’ll probably fit in our normal reading as well.

Today we learned about ground hogs (also known as woodchucks)  in the Ultimate Guide to wildlife in North America. 

Learning what they are called woodchucks led to the question of what does it mean to chuck wood mommy?   So I answered that and then he laughed at how they can climb trees to escape from their enemies.   The lad is well acquainted with woodchucks since we camped last summer at a place with a whole lot of woodchucks and he had fun chasing them from burrow to burrow.


Then off to read from “the Lamb”. Today we did chapter Eight.

Then we read from our world history book.   We are learning about pirates. We read three pages today, more than usual, but it was just very very interesting.



We learned about one guy who got his head cut off since he took two trips to find El Dorado and was unsuccessful and another guy who sailed around the world and about privateers.

We did one page out of the Dress the pirates.  The page we did fit in with the privateers.

We did two pages in this book.  We had only planned to do one but then looking ahead the lad found a page with a cat and a couple of naughty looking rats so OF COURSE we had to do that page as well!  🙂

We have started to go through this book called “the big book of questions and answers about Jesus.”

We did lesson three today.   it was on how Jesus was both God and man completely and it’s difficult to understand but means that Jesus was everything we are but so very much more PLUS he never ever did anything bad.
I need to post a pic of our blow up globe.  I LOVE IT.  It’s so immensely portable.  🙂  I love  that I can spin it in my hands and there is no weight but air.   It was also affordable.  🙂    But I digress.   We used our globe when we talked about pirates today.  One pirate sailed around the world collecting treasures.   We were able to trace his steps and the lad’s best guess was that it would have taken him at least 100 hours if not maybe more to do all that travelling.     He thought it interesting that pirates, if they worked for a king or queen were called privateers.

We have started an new art project.
We’ve taken a book called Imagine a Place

I got this book out for the pictures, I thought they would spawn conversation, but as I looked through it I got to thinking …wow.. what an interesting book.  I should be able to use this to work with the lad on imagining different things and just seeing how we can imagine different things perhaps even differently from the artist.

It was a great activity for us.    There are fourteen “imagine a place’s” in this book so we’ll be able to use it over the next three weeks as a regular activity to do. 

here’s what we came up with.

these are the words offered us:

Imagine a place…
where you bend and sway
leap and land,
right where a story begins.

 Mine was a long grass with insects leaping and landing.  The grass is being blown by the wind so is bending and swaying, the sky is turning dark and still the grass bends and sways and is filled with colours…just waiting for children to come running through it pell mell on the way home before the rains come.

   The lad’s dictation   ” there’s an island in the middle of the ocean, the waves are always crashing across the island. there are some lizards that can walk on water.   and for them to walk on the water means they have flaps on their feet that make bubbles and they require to be light, to make bubbles and also speed.   and nothing else.”

 This is the picture that we looked at after we finished our own drawings.  We found this picture quite interesting…how the rocks and children leaping from stone to stone turned into a castle/town that people could peer down into.   

and then we watched the Velveteen Rabbit again.  I like it, it’s a well done story. 🙂

I neglected to add that we played two games today.
Jenga (good for motor control, logic and just fun)
Catopoly – math skills, following rules, being a good sport and such like.