3rd Grade Weeks 6&7: Let's Reflect!

We're going to take a look at the work of Claude Monet and his many paintings that involve water. His en plein air work will inspire our own art! Using his work as inspiration we're going to put our towns on the edge of the water and reflect them into the river!

Study the artwork above. The painting shown is by Claude Monet, titled Houses on the Achterzaan, completed in 1871. Look at the water. What do you see reflected in it? Claude Monet was part of an art movement known as Impression. Let's learn about it!

Impressionism developed in the late 1800's in France. Up until this point most art was created indoors, in a studio. A group of artists, including Claude Monet, changed all of this, becoming interested in capturing the effects of light and color rather than just making a copy of a subject. Instead of working inside, they started painting outdoors! In French, this is called en plein air, in the open air!

They were trying to capture an ‘impression’ of what the person, light, atmosphere, object or landscape looked like to them at a particular moment in time. They used flecks and dabs of paint, and played with color to show light, in order to give the viewer a glimpse, or impression, of how a scene looked at a particular moment. They tried to capture the movement and life of what they saw and show it to us as if it were happening before our eyes. Their paintings showed scenes and landscape that were a part of everyday life.

Explore and learn about the famous works of Monet by listening to the book below.

Let's add some color!

Before we can reflect our cities we need to add some color! Since we only drew on the top half of our papers we can only color on the top half as well! Don't touch the bottom!

For this to work you have to use washable markers!!! If you don't have around freeze and wait to finish this project!

Have fun with your colors but this project works best when you color the entire half of your paper, from the fold line all the way up! Go ahead and create a beautiful sky, it can just be blue or add colors so that it looks like a sunrise, sunset, or a storm is coming! Color slowly and carefully because you want everything to be a very solid strong color!

Reflecting on the water

Look at these paintings done by Claude Monet, all picturing a scene reflected in water. Let's create some of that same beauty in our own art! Time for some magic! Check out my video below to see how we're going to transform our artwork into a view over water!

Once yours is finished and dry take a picture and share it with me on Seesaw!!

Check out my finished example below! I tried add a little extra blue in the water.