My kids’ school has no art teachers. I am guessing this is probably not an uncommon occurrence nationwide, so I am assisting the PTO along with some other parents in trying to get this Art Smart program up and running again.

My plan is to create about 10 or 15 ten minute lessons that briefly talk about an artist’s biography and the style they are known for, and then to post those lessons on youtube so that anyone else who might be in need of some kind of art instruction has access to it. Doing this will help me to get my “Build a Book” series done as well since I’ll be working on that at some point down the line. (More on that when I get the time).

Because I know there are a lot of kids who probably only have access to the most basic supplies I’ll keep this as minimalist as possible. Crayons, colored pencils, and markers on copy paper will be used for the majority of the lessons. These are not my preferred tools, but you really can do a lot of amazing things with the most basic of tools if you understand the concepts and build up the skills necessary, and hopefully explaining that to the kids will help them to see the value in doing the lessons this way if they happen to be bummed about not getting to use the best materials in the world.

The good news is that the techniques and concepts shown with these materials translate easily to any materials the kids have available.

The first lesson I did was a lesson on Monet where I talked a little about warm and cool colors to do a landscape with a haystack, and that can be seen here:

Monet Art Smart Video

I’ll add each new lesson as it’s completed to the youtube channel.