Paleolithic Day (aka Cave Painting)

(Above is an animation about how some cave paintings may have been drawn to suggest movement. By the flicker of torchlight these paintings may have seamed to almost come alive!)

In Class today we learned about Paleolithic Art. Paleo-, meaning ancient, and -lithic, meaning stone make up the word Paleolithic which is another word for the ancient stone age. It was called this because the people who lived at this time make their tools from stone. (They also used bone and ivory.) They didn't have the technology to use metals yet. The earliest cave painting date to around 30,000 to 40,000 years ago! Wow!

Cave of Altamira, Spain

These early painters made their paint from grinding natural minerals into powders and mixing them with animal fat or their own saliva.

Cave of Hands, Argentina

Why did these people paint in caves? No one knows for sure. What are your ideas? Many people think it was for ritualistic purposes- hoping for a good hunt or giving thanks for a good hunt. Maybe they painted just because it's fun! Some people have speculated that they painted in caves to decorate the areas they live but it was unlikely that they lived in these caves. The areas were often very deep in the caves and hard to get to.

Lascaux Cave, France

One of the most important elements to notice in these cave paintings is how the animals are stylized. This means the artist has simplified the shapes of the animals and exaggerated their features. We know EXACTLY what these animals are at first glance, but we know that's not really what the animals look like in real life.

Chauvet Cave, France

Have you ever seen a Rhino with such huge shoulders and such a tiny rump? Nope! This isn't a mistake though; the artists were purposely stylizing these animals. This is what makes these paintings so intriguing and beautiful. It takes skill to produce caricature at this level. They must have spent a great deal of time looking at and studying these creatures in order to render them this way. Artists still today look to these ancient paintings for inspiration.

 Chauvet Cave, France

Most cave paintings represent large, wild animals. The most common types are herbivores, like dear, horses, rhinos, bison. Some caves also feature predirory animals too, like lions, bears, hyenas, and panthers. You might find cave paintings depicting people, although that's rare. Sometimes the painters make hand stencils and nonrepresentational objects like shapes, dots and lines.

To learn more about these cave paintings, check out the Ancient Craft website. Lascaux and Chauvet are some of the best known caves. 

You might be inspired to make something beautiful after you learn about these paintings.
Or maybe you want to make a silly parody like these:

Check out the work my students made!!

 I thought this one was really cool! I showed the kids examples of the some paintings where the artist had drawn the animals to have extra legs as possible signs of motion (as in the video at the beginning of this post) and this student added extra legs to her horse like he's trotting and bucking!

 The kids likes to trace the animals in wet clay. Once these "rocks" dry they'll be able to paint them.

 She made a necklace to wear her animal, traced in yarn! I like the creativity here!

Having a little too much fun, perhaps? Getting some chalk pastel on his face!

 A beautiful, stylized bison, drawn just from memory!

 What a cute little Zebra! :)

I added some craft paper to the wall as a little "cave wall," and after a while I noticed no one was drawing on it. I went up and drew a picture of my cat, then had a couple students volunteer to be by my models and I did quick sketches of them. Well.. apparently they weren't thrilled with how my drawings turned out. From that point, it was a mad scramble for the kids to run up to the wall and add their own little "embellishments" to the drawing.

This is the final product.. yikes. :-P But that's ok. They had a blast, and bringing about enthusiasm about art is a big part of what this class is all about.  The parts they added like the horse, rhino, bison and zebra are all really wonderful. I may cut this mural down so the can save those parts.

And Friday, we learn about Matisse!

Kandinsky Day

Today was the first day of the June BRIGHT art class. There was a great turnout for the class, and I can already tell my students are very smart, respectful, talented, and eager to learn! What more would you ask for?? We learned about the artist Wassily Kandinsky.

Kandinsky was born in Moscow, Russia in 1866. He originally went to school for law and didn't start painting until he was 30! He, along with other Russian artists, moved to Germany to pursue art. In 1911, these arts formed a group called, "Der Blaue Reiter," or "The Blue Rider" in English. They used symbolism of blue horses or blue men in horseback in their art. The color blue was considered to be a spiritual color and the Blue Rider group wanted to add spirituality into art. Some of Kandinsky's later works are said to represent the chaos of the apocalypse and other Biblical scenes. He taught at the Bauhaus School of Art until it was closed  by the Nazi party in 1933. Kandinsky's earliest influence was local Russian folk art. When he was young, he was mesmerized by the bold, bright colors and the way the dark background make the colors pop.

 

Kandinsky's earliest work absolutely reflects this influence.  You can see the bright colors popping from the dark backgrounds. 

 

Munich-Schwabing with the Church of St. Ursula by Wassily Kandinsky, 1908

 Murnau, Dorfstrasse (A Village Street) by Wassily Kandinsky, 1908

His later works became mostly non-representational abstracts. This means specific objects, people, or animals could not be seen- only simple shapes and lines.

 Kandinsky's On White II (1923).

Wassily Kandinsky's Composition VII, 1913

Kandinsky, Color Study of Squares, 1913

Kandinsky, Cpmposition VIII, 1923

 Kandinsky, Several Circles, 1926

Kandinsky made a lot of paintings in his career! To see the full list in chronological order, check out Wikipaintings. Here are some of the wonderful Kandinsky-inspired creations my class made tonight!

 We even learned the process can be art in itself! Since today was the first day, it was kind of a flurry or activity and I only got a few photos. (The art that was left to dry after everyone left) On the agenda for tomorrow: Paleolithic cave painting!

 

Welcome to the Bright Creative Workshops Blog. This is a place for parents to learn about how to incorporate art into their child's lives. I will post information about the classes I teach, as well as tips and ideas for creative things you can do at home. Thank you for stopping by!

 

(detail of van Gogh's "Starry Night." -image via Google)