Homeschooling Fun with Art

I just have to tell you how fun our art class was recently thanks to Grant Wood’s famous painting, “American Gothic”. I’m sure you’re familiar with it:

Photo source: Art Institute of Chicago

We’ve been using the book Great American Artists for Kids: Hands-On Art Experiences in the Styles of Great American Masters.

Projects include various media to introduce art appreciation to children. Each featured artist has a short biography accompanied by instructions on how to create art mimicking the style of the artist.

This week’s class was such a huge hit! The kids {and me} were literally cracking up. They told me that this was the best art class we’ve had yet. Okay, I guess it was a winner!

I never knew that the portrait is NOT of a farmer and his wife.  She is is daughter.  Makes sense now that I really look at the portrait and realize how much younger she looks.  But, the funniest part for me was that I never thought the guy looked much like a farmer {if you can look like a farmer}.

It turns out that the man in the portrait was the artist’s dentist! Doesn’t he look like a dentist?

Wood used his sister and his dentist to model his perspective on the simple life of American farmers. It’s called “American Gothic” because of the gothic style window on the otherwise plain farmhouse in the background.

The author suggests that children create a unique “American Gothic” by putting their own spin on the people. The book includes a list of ideas such as aliens, cats, elves, football players, etc. Creativity and humor are encouraged. My kids wanted to use pictures from magazines to make caricatures.  I’m only posting two of their pictures since I totally forgot to take pictures of all of the kids’ art before they went home.

It was so much fun. With the kids’ added sense of humor it made it a memorable day. All the kids {and their friends who joined us} were trying to out-do each other by making the most absurd and unique creations from every silly picture they could find.  It was an enjoyable way to learn about a great American artist.

 

Here is the link to the author’s website where you can print out a copy of the farmhouse.