At the beginning of each art lesson, I ask the students to venture a guess as to where the artist was from, based on the sound of their name. Consequently, they’re learning that many of the “masters” originated in France (and Italy, and the Netherlands). They are also discovering that the French drop the sounds of consonants at the end of their words, that Italian might be the easiest foreign language to pronounce, and that artists from the United States are multi-cultural (as one would expect in a pluralistic culture such as ours).
When I posited the question during this lesson on Grandma Moses, I got my favorite response of all time: “I’m thinking she might have been from Egypt.” After all, Moses was from Egypt. Classic. But no, I had to inform this worthy guesser that Grandma Moses was, in fact, from the United States. Laughed out loud.
Sixth-graders are a great bunch to teach. Most of them have dubbed themselves as either artists or non-artists by this point. So the trick is to reel them in through art history, and/or use a medium with which they have little to no experience so they know they can chalk up any perceived failures to it being their first time. In this lesson, we did both.
First, we read this book. I’m a big fan of Mike Venezia’s series. I especially enjoyed that he mentioned that Grandma Moses’ depictions of the simple life resulted from the lack of availability of modern technology. Like movies, TV, and CD players. No mention of handheld devices. I checked the publication date: 2003. Ancient history by now.
Second, I breezed through this powerpoint, giving a additional background on Grandma Moses, introducing a few art principles (horizon line, foreground, middle ground, and background), and explaining the project step-by-step. Here it is, in a nutshell:
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Draw horizon line.
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Draw background.
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Draw objects in foreground.
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Fill in the middle ground.
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Wet small brush to blend colors on the smaller objects.
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Use larger brush to blend colors of the rest of the landscape.
It worked out well. In the assignment, kids were expected to include objects one might have found in a typical Grandma Moses scene. Trees, fields, people, buildings, animals, a path or stream. It kept them engaged and there was little to no mess, as a bonus.
Materials used: Watercolor pencils, watercolor paper (9X12)
Difficulty: Easy. Sixth-graders were encouraged to take their time. Most used up the full hour and a half they were given. Instruction took about 30 minutes.
