Cezanne's Still Lifes

Last week, we talked about SHAPES when we designed our Monochromatic Robots. Since that was working from imagination, I wanted to teach working from observation, especially because I have some pumpkins and gourds!

I chose to look at Cezanne's still life paintings, because he believed in simple shapes (circle, triangle, square, rectangle). The word I added this week was OVERLAP. I wrote the following words on big tag cards, which I will add to our Word Wall.

Still Life
Cezanne
Shapes
Overlap 

Cezanne loved SHAPES. And sometimes, he OVERLAPPED his shapes. Where did he overlap his shapes? 

I cut a variety of smallish pieces of colored construction paper and told the students to create at least 3 compositions, and to try different sized paper. Small is less threatening, and kind of cute. (Some only made one if they were focused and worked large, but I said three for those kids that do a quick job just so they can free draw after the assignment.)

I put out chalk and oil pastel, knowing that my containers would get eventually get mixed (Virgo shudder), but I wanted them to try both materials and work them together. For the kids that truly hate the feeling of chalk, I let them use colored pencils, and they came out with some cool results, too. Either way our goal was TO COVER THE WHOLE PAPER WITH COLOR.

Oh, by the way, I did this with all of my students this week: Kindergarten through grade 8. For Upper Elementary and Middle School I also used the word CROP and we talked about zooming in to the still life and thinking about our edges of the paper.

I always find myself talking about the Venn of drawing from imagination or observation, and how artists can fall in that center hybrid of drawing from observation but making choices about how they are editing. In the images below you'll definitely see where some students let their imagination take over and just used the still life as inspiration... to some students who really took on the task of drawing as realistically as possible, to some who just broke down shapes and color in their composition. Man, I love art.

Here are some images from class:

Put your drawings on a carpet square as you finish them:

               

3rd grade:

4th grade:

7th grade:

7th grade: (with this one with talked about crisp edges vs atmosphere, and how he liked the Impressionists. He was really proud of it and shared his process with the class, which, no joke, the whole class sincerely applauded him when he talked about persevering on it.)

                

1st grade:

4th grade:

3rd grade: