There are many different styles of art and hundreds of amazing artists, so choosing just a few to share with your children can be difficult. Here are just a few important artists that your children should know about and some fun projects that can make the learning even more fun.
One artist that children generally enjoy learning about is post-Impressionist Vincent Van Gogh. His colorful style in works such as Irises and Starry Night are quite appealing, and his style influenced a wide range of artists. With a painting such as Starry Night, your kids can actually recreate this work with an easy-to-download PDF mural from ArtProjectsForKids.org. Each page printed has a section of Starry Night on it, and your children simply color each piece and then you put it all in order to recreate their own version of the famous painting. You can paste it down on a piece of poster board, cardboard or even an actual canvas.
Claude Monet was the founder of the Impressionist movement, and his works are vivid, colorful and quite appealing to children. First, show them some examples of his work such as Woman With A Parasol and Water Lilies. To create colorful version of Water Lilies with your children, have them use oil pastels on a piece of white paper and have them draw a few lilies on the paper. Draw light green swirls around the base of each lily and a few white squiggles to show water movement. Finally, paint over the oil pastels with blue watercolors.
Pablo Picasso is another excellent artist that kids should know about. It is interesting to show children how his work progressed during his life from his early days through this blue and rose periods and onward to cubism. A cubist self portrait can be fun, and it’s important to help your children create a face large enough to stretch from one side of the paper to the other. Stress that it doesn’t matter if part of the head is not included. Use large shapes for the eyes nose and mouth and divide up the face in sections by coloring different areas in different colors.
Of course, there are many fine American painters, as well, and Georgia O’Keeffe is just one wonderful example. Her works demonstrate the beauty, strength and delicacy of nature with landscapes and paintings of large flowers. Instruct your children to sketch giant flowers in pencil and then color the flowers in with oil pastels or chalk pastels, which they can blend a bit with their fingers. For examples, an old calendar with flowers on them or a gardening book or magazine might have good examples.
Showing your children the works of someone like Jackson Pollock is an excellent introduction to the idea of abstract art. Kids will have a great time splashing and tossing paint onto a large poster board or canvas. Consider using a black paper or perhaps painting a canvas black with rough brush strokes and then splashing paint on top of that. This can be a fun outdoor art project, and kids will enjoy the freedom of creating art without any lines or rules.
Kate Halfey enjoys writing about art projects for kids. For further information about art projects like Joan Miro paintings or to discover Kandinsky for kids art projects, please go to the ArtProjectsForKids.org website today.