PAINT LIKE MONET

ABOUT CLAUDE MONET

When Monet was young, he noticed that painters created dark and very serious art during this time. Subjects like history and religion bored him. He preferred bright colors that showed scenes from everyday life.

Monet started to paint pictures with loose and sketchy strokes. Many people thought that his work wasn’t complete, but Monet didn’t care. He continued to paint the way he saw the world.

Claude Monet was the first painter in the Impressionist movement. The word IMPRESSIONISM comes from one of Monet’s first paintings called Impression: Sunrise. Art critics labelled the painting, impressionism, in order to mock it but the term stuck. It now means painting with light.

Monet liked to paint series of the same images with the only difference being how the light fell on the subject during certain times of the day. He painted over 30 paintings of the haystacks near his home.

TRY THIS LESSON:

I love lessons that expose a pattern to an otherwise complicated painting. When you first look at Monet’s painting, The Isle Grande Jatte, 1878, it looks rather complicated and daunting to paint.

But when you layer the artwork and outline the simple lines of the background first, then add the foreground at the very end, it becomes manageable.

HERE’S WHAT YOU’LL NEED TO PAINT LIKE MONET:

• 12″ x 18″ regular white drawing paper (I use Tru-Ray)
• Liquid tempera paints (white, green, yellow, blue, black)
• Colored oil pastels
• medium round brush
• Small pointed round brush and black tempera paint

WHAT TO DO:

• On a white sheet of paper, draw a simple HORIZON LINE. This operates the water from the sky.
• Then, draw a hill line over the horizon line.
• Add a few simple homes/barns and buildings with oil pastels.
• With a sky color paint (Monet often used yellow tones for the sky) paint a sky.
• Paint the hills with a muted green color.
• Paint the water, using white, blues and greens. Keep in mind that Monet painted choppy reflections in the water. have children copy the colors of the buildings and use paint to make dappled marks in the water.
• Use a small brush and the watered down black tempera paint to paint the trees.
• Watch the video to see how the trees and leaves are painted.

HOW TO PAINT THE TREES AND LEAVES:

For more art lesson projects, check out the Deep Space Sparkle shop HERE.