We’re using Harmony Fine Arts, which is already laid out over 4 years. To give you an idea of what they cover, she’ll spend an hour each week on artist studies. One week has readings from The Story of Painting or Annotated Mona Lisa. The next week has a video from Sister Wendy’s dvds (it goes with the Story of Painting book). The third week has them looking at paintings or videos online and copying a painting or portion of a painting in a medium of their choice. The 4th week has them write a short paper on the time period studied (1-2 pages).
In addition to this, they use Artistic Pursuits, which you could count towards a studio art credit. There is also a free music study program for high school, although I’ve decided we’ll just keep this portion as a family subject.
There are several ways you can use picture portfolios and composer studies to equal a fine arts credit. You can do them as directed-one of each per term and add them all up at the end of your child’s senior year to equal 1 credit or you could spend an entire year doing composer and picture study daily to equal 1 credit. I vastly prefer the 1st option. It would seem like too much cramming to fit it all into one year.
On a side note, most states include music instruction and art instruction for fine arts credit as well.