Degas and a New Whiteboard

This weeks' Meet the Masters course was about Edgar Degas, a French Impressionist. We learned he liked to paint dancers and horses.

We also learned that ballerinas, during his time, wore different colored ribbons around their waists to show their dancing level (kind of like martial artists and their belt colors). So the art project was to do chalk stains on a drawing of a dancer's ribbon.

First, we flipped a line drawing of a bow upside down and copied it that way, to help activate our right brain and deactivate our left brain. We then rubbed a piece of chalk on a scrap paper until chalk dust piled up, wrapped a tissue around our paper to gather the dust, and rubbed this dust onto the drawing to create a "stain". It was neat trying out such a different technique than anything Skyla or Penton have every really tried before.

Gathering chalk dust with her finger wrapped in tissue.

Rubbing the chalk onto his paper.

Our final products.

 We also finally got a large whiteboard in the school room. Once the kids found out they were allowed to draw on it, it has been covered by people and bubbles and animals and treasures and whatever else the kids can dream up.

The red marker is Penton's and the blue marker is Skyla's.