"It's just hard for me to imagine anything besides red circles," my cooperating teacher's substitute said, imagining what would happen as as I set up the apple still life scenes in preparation for 1st grade. Part of me was like shoot, is she right? Is it nuts to teach still life drawing to a bunch of 6 year olds? But then I remembered, these 6 year olds I'm teaching, they're pretty awesome. 6 year olds in general are pretty awesome, and they can definitely do this. And oh boy, they did. To introduce the lesson, I used a lovely resource I found through the Met's website (you can find it here: http://www.metmuseum.org/content/interactives/cezannes_apples/cezanne.html) I started with the book offered on the site (bonus: it reads itself!) and as a class we talked about how Cézanne made art- emphasizing how he looked very closely and the shapes and colors that he saw. "All of us have seen apples before. We know what they look like, right?" I asked the students, as I drew the classic apple shape, using only one shade of red to fill it in, topping it off with a single bright green leaf and a brown stem. They agreed. They knew what apples looked like. I held up my sheet of paper, and again, they agreed, it was definitely an apple. "When Paul Cézanne drew and painted his apples, did he just draw what he thought they looked like? I Or did he look at them very ter a brief discussion, I demonstrated how to draw a still life, again emphasizing color and shape.I encouraged students to start with the big shapes first (the apples and the plate they were sitting on) and then focus on the smaller shapes and all the different colors they could see. We talked about all the different colors we saw within the apples, and after a few reminders and a little review, I let them loose. They got to work, and I swear, my little color-loving heart nearly exploded. The complexity of their color choices- ugh, I'm drooling now just thinking about it. A far cry from red circles! I tell ya, these 6 year olds? They got it. After completing their apple still lifes, I had them do another to serve as the background. This time, we used 12x18" white paper and watercolors (the more experimentation with medium, the better!) As in the book we read, we decided it just needed a little somethin' extra...so just as Cézanne did, we added a nice big vase of flowers. Materials Needed:
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Sam PlaschElementary Art Teacher Archives
May 2018
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