My Art History professor in college was an amazing woman with quirky Southern charm. She told my class about the first a trip she made to Aix-en-Provence and how she just didn't understand why Cézanne would paint a mountain so many times. The tour group was tumbling toward the town by way of coach and there was a moment when all of a sudden Mont Sainte-Victoire, Cézanne's beloved mountain, became visible. Finally she understood the gravity of the subject and why it had come under such intense study by the artist. She knew it was a mountain but didn't have a clue as to its enormous size and surprising and sudden appearance from a great distance. This wasn't my first interaction with the artist but it's one of those great anecdotes that sticks with you.

I came across this blog post and wanted to share my love of Cézanne with the tiny humans. Instead of looking to Mont Sainte-Victoire (maybe next year) we looked at his still-life works. I wanted to create a similar, bright version of what I saw in the blog post but keep it a simple by using large flat areas of color. So here we go...

Materials:
+ 9x12 white sulfite paper
+ pencils, erasers
+ black crayons
+ warm colored tempera
+ cool colored and black gouache
+ paintbrushes, buckets of water

Draw a bowl/plate that's rather large. I asked the students to draw no more than nine apples. Whether they followed that or not...well you fight the big battles and this is not Gettysburg. I demonstrated some different ways to draw the tops/stems and they went with it.

Trace those beauties with a black crayon.

I really loved the idea of using a spoon to paint the apples. This threw the tiny humans for a loop. Crazy Art teacher, right here! In reality though, it's much like using a palette knife. Most of them would have still preferred to have used a brush. Here you can see my set up at the tables and the variety of their apple placement. How great is that?!

Using the gouache, paint in the background so that there is a distinction between the dish and the background. The texture created by small artists always amazes me.

Before this last step we had a conversation about light and shadow. If you have a room that can get dark enough, use a flashlight to demonstrate this concept. My room doesn't get dark enough at that time in the afternoon so I just turned off my lights and used the natural light for my demonstration. Light is directional and if something is placed in front of the light it will cast a shadow. I used myself and a few hand-held items to demonstrate how the shadow will shift when light direction is shifted. Students chose a direction and created their shadows using black and blue gouache. Don't forget that dish!

My students were happy to complete the painting the next time they came to class. I was just happy to see such varied and excellent results from my tiny humans. They handled the challenges that I threw at them admirably! Great effort, tiny humans!

Cézanne Still-life Painting