Has anyone used Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artist/Composer Series?

Yes, we have many of these books. They are different from what SCM sells but they are good. I’ve used many of the SCM portfolios and plan to use one of the music studies next year and two more picture study portfolios.

Barbara McCoy of Harmony Fine Arts ( I hope I spelled her name right) uses the Venezia books in her music and art ebook guides which can be found at her site and Rainbow Resource. I’m going to be using her guides as well.

HTH

They are very different from the SCM series.  It’s more of a picture book of the artist’s life.  I’d use it in addition to your regular picture studies.  The illustrations in the GTKTWGA are comic-book-ish in style, which I don’t really care for, but they are a nice, short introduction to an artist, which isn’t always easy to find.

That’s great, Holly!  I have one of my boys complaining that we don’t do enough picture study and art at home so thought I’d give her a try. I use her nature study challenges and I love those so I’m certain we’ll love the other studies, too! I’m super excited about it!

Let me just add that my 6-year-old LOVES the Venezia series.  We read several throughout the year to accompany our composer studies.  He just asked that I request from the library ALL the stories we read through the school year.  He reads them over and over.  I realize they aren’t CM friendly, but they certainly are very informative and fun.

I used some of the books from the Getting to Know the World’s Greatest Artists series to teach a co-op class of 6-8 year old students.  We paired each book with an art project (painting on plaster of Paris as frescoes, painting each other’s portraits, etc.), and the kids loved it.

We also used the books a few times when my kids were younger, and we watched the dvd’s which were available from the library.  They are exactly like the books and are quite entertaining as well.  I just found images of some pictures in the book (the artists’, not the book illustrations!) and printed them out to use for picture study.