I’m pretty straight forward in my artist study. I print up 6 to 8 pictures (on my printer using photo paper) per artist and stick them in sheet protectors. Each week we look at one picture, discuss it, talk about what we like, etc. We also read a few pages from a book about the artist each week. We absolutely love the Mike Venezia series. My kids read through these “just for fun.” I always have intentions of displaying the picture of the week on a wall somewhere, but I always forget. We’re creating a nice little notebook of all the pictures we’ve studied though. I also have intentions to write what they say and slide that in the sheet protector at the back so they can read back over their observations, but alas, I rarely get around to that. We usually look up the painting online too because often the coloring is different from my printer and we can see light and dark better.
My older boys have been doing it this way for 4 years. My 5-yr-old has tagged along with them. He has lots of comments and can name pictures just as well as his brothers. I usually let him narrate first though so he can choose the more obvious things and let the olders catch the smaller details.
Sometimes we’ll try to create art using the same style as the artist we study but mostly I just sit back and let them explore. I’m always amazed at what they come up with on their own, with no prompting from me.
