Still Life Studies in the Style of Paul Cézanne

I had another great day in the art room today, this time with Rachel’s Year Two and Three class. I had really been looking forward to teaching them the still life lesson that I was such a hit with Deanne’s class a few weeks ago. We had a shortened lesson today because we had a session with James from the City Council. He came to do a Waste Audit session with the kids as part of our school’s sustainability focus. Even though our art day was shorter than usual the students created some beautiful works and learnt about Paul Cézanne in the process.

I set up apples and pears on risers so the students would experience what it is like to draw from life. Still life arrangements were traditionally used as a basis for formal experimentation, something that as the Post-Impressionist artist Paul Cézanne did regularly. To begin the day the students learnt how to create value scales to warm up their sketching skills. We did three scales: hatching, cross-hatching and scribbles.

Next the students did an observational drawing of the apples and pears. I modelled the difference between drawing from imagination and drawing from life. We talked about drawing what we can actually see, not what we think we can see.

I demonstrated two ways of drawing the shape of the fruit, by either starting at one point and drawing the outline as one continuous line or by drawing the base shapes of the fruits and then adding contour lines after. The students then used their pencil to add shadows and highlights to their drawings.

We s†udied Paul Cézanne’s still life artworks and talked about his artistic style. The students identified loose brushstrokes, layers of colour and dark shadows as being typical in his work. The students used layers of oil pastels to make gorgeous studies of the fruit in the style of Cézanne. I modelled how to keep the work loose and layer the colours to achieve detail and depth in their work.

The students created some wonderful artworks today but what was more exciting for me was observing them thinking, creating and problem-solving as wee artists. The students were engrossed in the lesson and stretched themselves with the challenge of creating art in the style of Cézanne. The beautiful artworks from Deanne and Rachel’s classes are displayed proudly in the entrance way to their classroom. Great work everybody!