We are studying John Singer Sargent, the Painter and Aaron Copland, the Composer as part of our Modern Art studies with Harmony Fine Arts Grade 8. I printed the Composer Notes for Copland from the A Young Scholars Guide to the Composer, and the notebooking pages from HFA Gr 8, and set Nathan to exploring about Copland’s life, while we listened to his music on You Tube. 

We watched the most fascinating video on John Sargent – a video slide show of his pictures.  Nathan was excited and said he really liked his work.  I liked how he seems to play with shadows and light.  He might have had a subject in a corner of a garden, and light would be shining some place else, – without shafts of light – but just – well hard to explain.  I really love the girls in his photographs. I could picture myself in his time, out doors with my pals, in canoes and by the lake, lounging for a painting with the children around. One in particular of the mom/friend holding a young boy’s hand as he stood behind a couch. I could picture Jon drumming on the couch and me holding him down. I really felt like I could have been IN any of his scenes. 

We went out to our newly arranged craft area to work on our pastel projects.  Brights on dark paper. 

Ya.  I really like art time. . . . We turned on Pandora and put in Sargent as a composer channel, then kept track of when which songs we listened to. I REALLY like his music. Maybe because I played Trumpet and French Horn in school. I recognized many songs through band.  Great theme music.  The boys recognized quite  few pieces.

We moved on to playing with skin colors, and faces – and I wish I had taken before photos . . .

Nate said his face looked like a balloon so he just changed it. . . . .

I adored their faces, then stopped to take a photo of the other drawings while they finished – when it happened. . . . .

Zombie Attack . . . Sigh. 

I think I’ll start taping up their drawings to the curtain in front of us. . . .

I’ll put up a link to the Composers study when it goes live – until then – Keep Studying the Composers! – Here’s Last Week’s Linkup!