Week 2 & 3 Art summary for explorer and trailblazer class (September 17th & 24th)
In class the past few weeks, we studied a European artist known as El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos) 1541-1614. He did not become popular until he moved to Spain in 1577 and began painting religious scenes for the cathedral in Toledo. The tall, solemn figures in El Greco's paintings appear to be stretched - their legs, necks, arms, and faces are longer and thinner than real people have. El Greco's paintings seem like pictures from another world. Meanwhile, Europeans were settling amongst the Native American Indians and this was like a whole new world and life to them. Settlers stated that the Native Americans were extremely tall. We observed and discussed El Greco's work and formed opinions about his distorted figure paintings and what they meant. Perhaps he got word that the Indians were very tall and his paintings portrayed those visions. This was fun and it got the children really thinking.
Our assignment that we've been working on are Tall Indian Figure Drawings. We distorted them by cutting them into sections and stretching them out then traced and colored those. (Tracing over the photos gave the kids good drawing practice, and this project allowed them to use their imagination when it came to filling in the blanks) We tied the whole drawing together by adding a patterned border on another piece of paper and put the two together. Some students did not finish and some were absent so we will take a few moments to finish during our next class and if they are still not done, they may finish at home.
For students who did finish and had time before class ended, we chose an emotion and drew an example of it in our notebooks.
Homework for Explorers only: please choose an emotion and draw an example in notebook. This can be a picture of what that emotion looks like or a scenario that would cause a certain emotion, etc. Please return notebooks next week. Thank you!
