PREP NOTES FOR LESSON 4 Your child will be asked to find a photograph to work from as a visual source. It is always best to allow children to choose the specific subject that they want to draw. Help students to understand that the photograph provides information. Artwork will not look like the photograph because it is not made in the same way with the same materials. Our art is our own expression, made with our own hands and that is what art should be. John Singleton Copley Lesson 4 (1738-1815)
John Singleton Copley was the American colonies’ finest artist. He painted portraits of the colonists in the English style that was so admired at that time. He added small touches, such as the flying squirrel in this painting that helped to tell a story about the boy. Copley’s paintings were the prized possessions of wealthy people living in the American colonies along the Atlantic coast before America became a nation.
Here, a boy has fed and offered a glass of water to a squirrel that he holds with a delicate gold chain. The painting was made to highlight Copley’s skills at painting glass, the fur of the squirrel, the velvet of the curtain, and the satin of the boy’s pink collar. When we look at a painting like this, we see a lot of complicated details. It is hard to know where tostart thedrawing.Manyartists like to start by thinking about simple shapes. We look at the object, like the boy in this painting, and set aside the details to draw the big simple shapes. The drawing to the right shows how we might see shapes in the painting. Look at how simply the small squirrel is drawn.
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