Celebrate the Earth: Create Art Outdoors With Your Children
One of the ways Impressionism revolutionized the art world was by taking the creation of art from the studio to the outdoors. In fact, Impressionists have been called “open air” painters, because they took advantage of the mobility offered by the invention of tubes of paint and went outside for inspiration. Following this art movement’s love of the outdoors, I was inspired to paint with my children outside in honor of Earth Day. Since Earth Day falls on a school day, we began our project over the weekend.
Due to the fact that it snowed here this weekend, my six-year-old daughter, three-year-old son, and I picked some flowers to inspire our painting rather than draw them in their natural location. We did set up our paints on the covered deck and worked quickly due to the cold temperatures. Using chalk to sketch out our ideas, we then covered the canvas in “crazy” colors for the under painting.
