Art Lesson: Ballet School by Edgar Degas

Last week we looked at Degas' painting "Ballet School". We talked about pastels and how to make pastel colors, and also looked at the figure and form in the painting.

To make our painting, we first made pastel paints--in retrospect, I wish we had made them pastel-y-er--and used sponges to sponge a light background on our papers, overlapping colors as we went along.

We then drew some practice figures on scrap paper.

The next day, the children drew their figures with oil pastels on their sponge-painted papers.
Michael went with a football picture. Nicholas's background reminded him of an Easter egg hunt. And Katie Grace, of course, drew a ballet picture. You can click on the picture for more detail.

Besides lightening the pastels, the only other thing I would have done differently would be to have the children outline their figures with either a fine black marker, or black tempera paint and a thin brush.

For more about Degas, see:
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/D/degas.html