5th Grade Project: Impressionism and Monet

The 5th grade have begun this unit by viewing a presentation over both Impressionism and Monet.  They have learned that the Impressionist were very interested in the effects of light on their subjects.  Using this as our key point, we moved into our first practice looking at light on our subjects.

Our first subjects are some very shiny plastic toys.  Dividing our sketch page into two halves, we then did a line drawing of the toy.  Students were told to look specifically for the shinier spots on the toys and mark those on their line drawings.  Once this was completed, we began to color.  We used small marks (like the Impressionists did) with crayons to apply color.  Students first colored in the shinier spots then they added their subjects actual color around those shiny spots.

In our second half of our page we only used color to create our drawings, we used no line work or pencils. I encouraged them that this was not about the drawing but the idea of looking at light and color, this took the pressure off of them and they became more ambitious with their experimentation.

The students began to see the Impressionism in their own work, often stopping to view their work from a distance.  This because we use small marks to apply our color lead to a smoother appearance of the colors as you moved back from it.  Though once close to the work you could see the small marks - they particularly enjoyed this aspect of the Impressionism.