Explore impressionism with Monet Impressionism as a movement was all about quickly capturing a moment in time. In a time before cameras, this was quite a feat! Artworks would have to be painted quickly and often paid attention to getting things that were time sensitive, like light, right. Monet's lily ponds were painted at many different times of the day for this reason. A big reason I love teaching about Impressionism is because I love telling the kids about how Monet's work was unpopular! Since Monet's work is generally synonymous with great Art, this usually comes as a shock, but it's true that his contemporaries thought his work was bad. It is a good lesson about not worrying about what others think of your Art (especially when they find out what Monet's work is worth now!)
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Important to note: I am writing from my own experiences in the classroom and do not in any way guarantee these projects will work for you. Some of these project ideas are exactly as I did them in the classroom, others have slight changes to reflect how I would do them next time. You know your student's capabilities and behaviour best. As with anything, always check the safety of all materials and processes and read product instructions carefully before you introduce them to students. Consider the age and maturity of your students before trying any of my ideas.
Major Outcomes
Colour: Cool colours, tints and shades, mixing primary colours and tints
Space: Simple perspective, backgrounds and foregrounds
Exploring and experimenting with elements to create artworks inspired by nature
Personal responses to art they view and create
Materials
Canson mixed media paper
Acrylic paints,
A variety of sizes of paintbrushes
This project took about 9 lessons all up, including response time (individual interviews with students). I completed this project with Year 3 students as it fits best with their objectives, but it fits in with a number of Year 2 objectives too. It could also easily be manipulated for older students.
Exploration of Techniques Take a close look at Monet's artworks. While the Water Lily series is a good one, look at his other ones too. Discuss the techniques you can see. Can you tell it is a painting and not a photo? How do you know? Can you see the brushstrokes? Does it look neat or messy?
Discuss how it is important to express light in an Impressionism painting. How has Monet shown shadows and highlights? Look at a real picture of reflecting water. This is a good segue into how to mix tints and shades. Teaching tints is easy. It is very simple for the kids to see the gradual increase in lightness as they add white. Shades are not so easy! It's very common for a kid to add what seems like a little bit of black and have the colour turn completely dark! I liked to show them the difference a teeny-tiny touch of black makes to a colour before letting them try, otherwise you'll end up with a black mess instead of a gradual increase in darkness.
I HIGHLY recommend letting them have a go on a chart first. Get them to start with the pure colour and slowly add little touches as they go. This will help them understand they can produce a huge range of 'colours' by just mixing two. I have a sample chart for sale here with the colours filled in.
Start Making Art! After a discussion on simple space (I like to do this by asking the kids to stand near and far away, and explaining how this is background and foreground. Nice tactile way of learning it!) We split our paper into background and foreground with a line down the center. Water in the foreground, folliage and bridge in the background. Simple. Referencing Monet's Water Lilies and a real photo of water, ask the students to use the same blobby and painterley strokes to paint the water. For texture and highlights, encourage them to use a variety of tints of blue. I like to go back and forth with the tints and shades I use, but some students who have the tendency to rush, it might be a good idea to encourage them to apply one tint at a time.
To get rid of the white bits, get them to play 'spotto' with a partner to help them find and blob away any leftover white!
Continuing to explore the texture of nature and the kinds of marks you can make with a brush, ask them to paint plants in the background. For this, I demonstrated a few strokes that represented different types of plants. Again, encourage a variety of tints and shades to create depth.
Students can smooth the paint on, dabble it on or paint individual leaves. Since it is in the background, the detail is not important and any shapes look good so long as there is a variety in dark and light.
Finally, using a thick layer of white, paint the bridge over the top. This is the recognizable feature! I got students to paint a bit of shadow too with some purple, this helped solidify the 'warm/cool colours' theme we had going, and it looks effective. When the students have finished, let them paint water lillies over the pond. To further explore space, you could discuss perspective and how the lillies would get smaller the further away they are.
Responding
Throughout the project, we talked for a few minutes each lesson about how Monet 'captured a moment' using techniques like painting quickly and capturing the light. We also discussed the colour scheme (cool) and how it was used to make the artwork feel peaceful. The students filled in a worksheet outlining the choices Monet had made and some of the elements they identified that contributed to this.
Resources
Colour Wheel with Tints and Shades