Our first "real" art lesson / project has been completed, and I must say - I'm impressed!

The instructional book we are using for our art lessons this year is Art for the Very Young (ages 3-6) by:  Elizabeth Kelly & Joanne McCanville, published by Instructional Fair.  From our first lesson, we are learning (or will better understand as we go along in our lessons) that lines (straight, curved, zigzag, bold, thick, thin, etc.) can be used to express or create shape, movement, emotions, and qualities such as sound, strength, importance, etc.

We viewed (from an online source) Pablo Picasso's Man With Hat (1912).  I must say that I personally do not like Picasso's work, and I wondered if my (not yet 5 year old) grandson would even recognize it as a "man" at all.  Surprisingly, he did!  He said it was a "magician with a magician's hat".  My grandson did not see the "violin" at the bottom of  Picasso's art work, but then that is an instrument that my grandson isn't familiar with so his lack of recognition is understandable.

We also viewed Franz Kline's Chief (1950), which depicts a "locomotive".  Kline's work also does not appeal to me, and I failed to see any resemblance to a locomotive.  I thought it looked more like a helicopter. Before allowing my impression of  Kline's work be known to my grandson, I asked him what he thought it looked like. "It looks like a helicopter," he said. Ummmm....there WERE helicopters in existence in 1950, right?  I wonder why Kline couldn't see a helicopter in this piece he'd created?  

Anyway, my grandkids created their own "line" art by cutting paper into straight, curved, and /or zigzag strips.  (Or, rather, my grandson did the majority of the cutting as his little sissy isn't proficient in the use of scissors as yet.) Then, my grandkids laid out the strips on a sheet of paper in a design that pleased them and glued the strips down.  They were asked to tell what their design looked like.

Here are their finished art pieces:

My grandson made two "line" pictures.

Picture on the left:  "Zebra".  Picture on the right: "The Waves".

 Yep! That is exactly what these pictures look like!  Fantastic!

My granddaughter didn't give her picture a name.  I don't think she really understood what we were doing.  (She is not yet 3 years old.)  She was too busy trying to get those scissors to work just right to care about anything else, as you can plainly see below.  (I noticed while she was cutting that whenever her hand opened, so did her mouth!  Whenever her hand closed, her mouth did, too!  lol!)

 

This is the design my granddaughter made from the paper strips her brother cut for her.  She didn't form an opinion as to what the end result looked like, but I think it looks like a Tornado!  What do you think?

 

This is the actual cutting work that my little granddaughter did today:  I really need to find smaller scissors.  The ones she used are for ages 4 and up.