I taught a homeschool art class to 13 kids in my kitchen yesterday.  Ahhhh!

It was so energizing, and now I have a cave painting on my garage door that the kids don't want me to take down- ever.  That's how much fun they had.  

I compromised and told them we would cut their portion out. 

The class started today with the first art ever and will keep going once a month till we get to modern art (the good kind of modern art... You'll see ). Here is a summary;

The Very First Artists in the World  !

The very first cave paintings were discovered in 1896 in the Altamira Cave in Santander, Spain. Almost 50 years later an even older discovery was found.

  In September 1940, four boys and a dog set out on an adventure in Dordogne, France.  As they walked through the woods the little dog, Robot, ran ahead toward a deep depression in the ground covered with overgrowth and began sniffing the sunken hole. Then, each one of the four boys slid through the hole in turn. “The descent was terrifying,”recalled Jacques Marsal who was just fourteen years old at the time, the youngest of the four boys. 

Marsal described what they saw as a “cavalcade of animals larger than life painted on the walls and ceiling of the cave; each animal seemed to be moving.” The ceiling was pure white, the paintings were brilliantly multicolored in reds, blacks, browns and ochres.  Find the full story here.  It is a great adventure story!

This discovery became known as the Hall of Bulls Cave in Lascaux, France.  We took a virtual tour of the cave that you can find here.  Dorathea was excited after class to go to this website and do the tour "all by herself".

The cave of Hands

We also briefly talked about the "Cave of the Hands" in Argentina.  and I showed them the picture from below

These hand print paintings are found all over the world, in Australia, North America, Spain, and Africa, and that although they look easy to do, they are made by blowing paint through hollow bones (like a prehistoric airbrush).  I also asked them why the same paintings would be all over the world when no art today is as identical. We tried this technique outside with a spray bottle, but the bottle got clogged before we could finish.

Early Art Tools

We made our own art supplies just like the cave men had to!   We used feathers,  fake fur and, twigs to make brushes.  We mixed clay, mud, and water for paint, and used charcoal straight from my wood stove ash pile  to draw with. 

I thought it was funny that the kids didn't take home art this week, but homemade brushes instead.

The kids practiced drawing the shape of the bulls, horses, unicorns (yes unicorns!) with crayon inside then we went out to try out our new neolithic brushes and paints!

Here is what we created!  

Notice the stags, horses, unicorns and people figures.  Horses are hard to draw, and I really saw them get much better as they drew and painted.  It was a great class, and at least when I asked D she remembered most of the history too.

Here are some questions to help them remember what they learned;

1. Where were the first cave paintings found?  France and Spain

2. Who found them? some boys and a dog

3. What where the paintings of?  What animals?  bulls, cows, stags, horses, unicorns

4. Did they paint them to  look like animals in real life? No!  They were very fat 

5. What did they use to paint with?  Did they go to the art store and buy paint and brushes? 

Can't wait for the next class Tues May 6th!   We'll be learning about Greek pottery, and making some of our own.  If you want to follow along with this  series I will be teaching from the book Usborne's The History of Painting

 which was 5$ on Amazon (what a great thrift store find!). It is titled The history of Painting but it also covers sculpture, and printmaking, and every other Art period in a brief way that connects art to history.

So thank you art class Mommas for letting your kids take this tour of history and get messy in my messy home!  I was blessed.- Allison